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

Where does a thought go when it’s forgotten?

Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.

I can imagine that the oceanic feeling could become connected with religion later on. That feeling of oneness with the universe which is its ideational content sounds very like a first attempt at the consolations...

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

One thus gets an impression that civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means to power and coercion. It is, of...

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,...

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love.

No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality,...

When a love-relationship is at its height there is no room left for any interest in the environment; a pair of lovers are sufficient to themselves

Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to taking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young.

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...

Where such men love they have no desire and where they desire they cannot love

Only a rebuke that ‘has something in it’ will sting, will have the power to stir our feelings, not the other sort, as we know.

It sounds like a fairy-tale, but not only that; this story of what man by his science and practical inventions has achieved on this earth, where he first appeared as a weakly member of the...

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...

Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.

It is a predisposition of human nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it.

Here libido and ego-interest share the same fate and have once more become indistinguishable from each other. The familiar egoism of the sick person covers them both. We find it so natural because we are...

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...

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...

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.

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

No neurotic harbors thoughts of suicide which are not murderous impulses against others redirected upon himself.

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

When one does not have what one wants, one must want what one has.

Homo homini lupus [man is wolf to man]. Who in the face of all his experience of life and of history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion?

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

Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.

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...

A woman should soften but not weaken a man.

I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him.

America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.

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...

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...

Our memory has no guarantees at all, and yet we bow more often than is objectively justified to the compulsion to believe what it says.