The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure.

Intolerance of groups is often, strangely enough, exhibited more strongly against small differences than against fundamental ones.

Cigars served me for precisely fifty years as protection and a weapon in the combat of life... I owe to the cigar a great intensification of my capacity to work and a facilitation of my self-control.

If there are quarrels between the parents or if their marriage is unhappy, the ground will be prepared in their children for the severest predisposition to a disturbance of sexual development or to neurotic illness.

Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.

Demons do not exist any more than gods do, being only the products of the psychic activity of man.

We find a place for what we lose. Although we know that after such a loss the acute stage of mourning will subside, we also know that we shall remain inconsolable and will never find a substitute. No matter what may fill the gap, even if it be filled completely, it nevertheless remains something else.

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.

In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself.

Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead.

There is no likelihood of our being able to suppress humanity's aggressive tendencies... Complete suppression of man's aggressive tendencies is not an issue; what we may try is to direct it into a channel other than that of warfare.

A man's heterosexuality will not put up with any homosexuality, and vice versa.

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

Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power.

The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.

Where id was, there ego shall be.

My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throw away without reflection.

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

Religion belonged to the infancy of humanity. Now that humanity had come of age, it should be left behind.