The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?’ – Sigmund Freud
The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises. – Sigmund Freud
The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization. – Sigmund Freud
I have found little that is ‘good’ about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think. – Sigmund Freud
The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him. – Sigmund Freud
Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility. – Sigmund Freud
A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world. – Sigmund Freud
We have long observed that every neurosis has the result, and therefore probably the purpose, of forcing the patient out of real life, of alienating him from actuality. – Sigmund Freud
Incidentally, why was it that none of all the pious ever discovered psycho-analysis? Why did it have to wait for a completely godless Jew? – Sigmund Freud
I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection. – Sigmund Freud
A certain degree of neurosis is of inestimable value as a drive, especially to a psychologist. – Sigmund Freud
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. – Sigmund Freud
We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts. – Sigmund Freud
He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore. – Sigmund Freud
What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books. – Sigmund Freud
Opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity. – Sigmund Freud
Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to talking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young. – Sigmund Freud
The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. – Sigmund Freud
