"Couldn't I for once have you and the work at the same time?"

"At this point it may be objected: well, then, if even the crabbed sceptics admit that the statements of religion cannot be confuted by reason, why should not I believe in them, since they have so much on their side: tradition, the concurrence of mankind, and all the consolation they yield? Yes, why not? Just as no one can be forced into belief, so no one can be forced into unbelief. But do not deceive yourself into thinking that with such arguments you are following the path of correct reasoning. If ever there was a case of facile argument, this is one. Ignorance is ignorance; no right to believe anything is derived from it."

"If youth knew if age could."

"A hero is a man who stands up manfully against his father and in the end victoriously overcomes him."

"America is a mistake, a giant mistake."

"No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere."

"We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love."

"Where id was, there ego shall be."

"When making a decision of minor importance I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters however such as the choice of a mate or a profession the decision should come from the unconscious from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life we should be governed I think by the deep inner needs of our nature."

"Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine."

"Anatomy is destiny."

"Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea they become powerless when they oppose it."

"When a man is freed of religion he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life."

"There is only one state- admittedly an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological- in which it does not do this. At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of his senses, a man who is in love declares that 'I' and 'you' are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact."

"Every man is a poet at heart."

"Instinct of love toward an object demands a mastery to obtain it, and if a person feels they can't control the object or feel threatened by it, they act negatively toward it."

"Sadism is all right in its place, but it should be directed to proper ends."

"We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our body, which is doomed to decay..., from the external world which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless force of destruction, and finally from our relations with other men... This last source is perhaps more painful to use than any other."

"Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times."

"In the depths of my heart I can't help being convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless."

"Human beings are funny. They long to be with the person they love but refuse to admit openly. Some are afraid to show even the slightest sign of affection because of fear. Fear that their feelings may not be recognized, or even worst, returned. But one thing about human beings puzzles me the most is their conscious effort to be connected with the object of their affection even if it kills them slowly within."

"The story is told of a famous German chemist that his marriage did not take place, because he forgot the hour of his wedding and went to the laboratory instead of to the church. He was wise enough to be satisfied with a single attempt and died at a great age unmarried."

"In this way the ego detaches itself from the external world. It is more correct to say: Originally the ego includes everything, later it detaches from itself the external world. The ego-feeling we are aware of now is thus only a shrunken vestige of a far more extensive feeling - a feeling which embraced the universe and expressed an inseparable connection of the ego with the external world."

"Dark, unfeeling and unloving powers determine human destiny."

"It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be."

"Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts."

"If you want to expel religion from our European civilization, you can only do it by means of another system of doctrines; and such a system would from the outset take over all the psychological characteristics of religion-the same sanctity, rigidity and intolerance, the same prohibition of thought-for its own defence. You have to have something of the kind in order to meet the requirements of education. And you cannot do without education."

"Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires."

"Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor."

"Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness."

"Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock."

"Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy."

"I may now add that civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind."

"Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies quite unlike people who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate in their . . . relations."

"A woman should soften but not weaken a man."

"The first requisite of civilization is that of justice."

"The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the powerful obstacle to culture."

"Life is impoverished, it loses in interest, when the highest stake in the game of living, life itself, may not be risked. It becomes as shallow and empty as, let us say, an American flirtation."

"Observe the difference between your attitude to illusions and mine. You have to defend the religious illusion with all your might. If it becomes discredited - and indeed the threat to it is great enough - then your world collapses. There is nothing left for you but to despair of everything, of civilization and the future of mankind. From that bondage I am, we are, free. Since we are prepared to renounce a good part of our infantile wishes, we can bear it if a few of our expectations turn out to be illusions."

"He does not believe that does not live according to his belief ."

"Toward the person who has died we adopt a special attitude: something like admiration for someone who has accomplished a very difficult task."

"Where does a thought go when it's forgotten?"

"One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful."

"I am going to the USA to catch sight of a wild porcupine and to give some lectures."

"The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind."

"The ego is not master in its own house."

"I had thought about cocaine in a kind of day-dream."

"The great question which I have not been able to answer despite my 30 years of research into the feminine soul is "what does a woman want"?"

"Our possibilities of happiness are already restricted by our constitution. Unhappiness is much less difficult to experience. We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful to us than any other."

"The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him."