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Sigmund Freud Quotes

Neurologist

Sigmund Freud, born on May 6, 1856, in Moravia, and died on September 23, 1939, in London, was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Known as the father of modern psychology, Freud made significant contributions to the understanding of human psychology, introducing concepts such as the unconscious mind, dream analysis, and sexual theory.

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Famous Sigmund Freud Quotes

“I have never doubted that religious phenomena are only to be understood on the pattern of the individual neurotic symptoms familiar to us.”

Individual Religious Understood Patterns Familiar Symptoms Neurotic Doubted

Book:The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud

Source: The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud

“A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual.”

War States Individual Peace Violence Permit Anti War Antiwar Disgrace Acts Of Violence Misdeeds

Book:The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud

Source: The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud

“The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.”

Individual Liberty Civilization Individuality

Book:Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

“No matter how much restriction civilization imposes on the individual, he nevertheless finds some way to circumvent it. Wit is the best safety valve modern man has evolved; the more civilization, the more repression, the more need there is for wit.".”

Men Way Needs Matter Individual Modern Civilization Safety Wit Nevertheless Restriction Repression Modern Man Valve

Author:Sigmund Freud

“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, in the human community. The possibility it offers of displacing a large amount of libidinal components, whether narcissistic, aggressive or even erotic, on to professional work and on to the human relations connected with it lends it a value by no means second to what it enjoys as something indispensable to the preservation and justification of existence in society.”

Source: The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud

“The psychic development of the individual is a short repetition of the course of development of the race.”

Courses Individual Race Development Repetition Psychics

Book:The Collected Works of Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalytic Studies, Theoretical Essays & Articles: The Interpretation of Dreams, Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Dream Psychology, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement, Leonardo da Vinci…

Source: The Collected Works of Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalytic Studies, Theoretical Essays & Articles: The Interpretation of Dreams, Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Dream Psychology, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement, Leonardo da Vinci…

“Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime--and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.”

“So in every individual the two trends, one towards personal happiness and the other unity with the rest of humanity, must contend with each other.”

Two Humanity Individual Unity Trends Personal Happiness

Book:Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

“The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization, though then, it is true, it had for the most part no value, since the individual was scarcely in a position to defend it. The development of civilization imposes restrictions on it, and justice demands that no one shall escape those restrictions.”

Values Individual Justice Liberty Position Development Civilization Demand Restriction

Book:Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

“Religion restricts the play of choice and adaptation, since it imposes equally on everyone its own path to the acquisition of happiness and protection from suffering. Its technique consists in depressing the value of life and distorting the picture of the real world in a delusional manner - which presupposes an intimidation of the intelligence. At this price, by forcibly fixing them in a state of psychical infantilism and by drawing them into a mass-delusion, religion succeeds in sparing many people an individual neurosis. But hardly anything more.”

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

“The individual does actually carry on a double existence: one designed to serve his own purposes and another as a link in a chain, in which he serves against, or at any rate without, any volition of his own.”

Doe Purpose Individual Existence Rate Chains Links Multiple Multiple Personalities Volition

Book:General Psychological Theory: Papers on Metapsychology

Source: General Psychological Theory: Papers on Metapsychology

“As regards intellectual work it remains a fact, indeed, that great decisions in the realm of thought and momentous discoveries and solutions of problems are only possible to an individual, working in solitude.”

Facts Problem Individual Decision Solitude Intellectual Solutions Discovery Regard Remains Realms Working It

Book:SIGMUND FREUD Ultimate Collection: Psychoanalytic Studies, Theoretical Essays & Articles: The Interpretation of Dreams, Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Dream Psychology, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Totem and Taboo, Leonardo da Vinci…

Source: SIGMUND FREUD Ultimate Collection: Psychoanalytic Studies, Theoretical Essays & Articles: The Interpretation of Dreams, Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Dream Psychology, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Totem and Taboo, Leonardo da Vinci…

“In the development of mankind as a whole, just as in individuals, love alone acts as the civilizing factor in the sense that it brings a change from egoism to altruism.”

Love Whole Individual Mankind Development Factors Altruism Egoism Alone In Love

Book:Group Psychology and The Analysis of The Ego: Illustrated & Psychology Glossary & Index Added Inside

Source: Group Psychology and The Analysis of The Ego: Illustrated & Psychology Glossary & Index Added Inside

“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. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.”

Knows Humans Happens Purpose Individual Nations Process Race Mankind Civilization Unity Eros Human Civilization

Book:The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud

Source: The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud

“Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as right in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as brute force.”