Quotessence
Home / Authors / Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud Quotes

Neurologist

Filter quotes by topic

AllMenIfsPsychoanalysisWorldHumansMayNeurosisReligionPeoplePsychologyDreamCivilizationDoeEgoChildrenLoveGivingIndividualLifeReligious

Famous Sigmund Freud Quotes

“It would be futile to delude ourselves that at present, readers find every pathography unsavory. This attitude is excused with the reproach that from a pathographic elaboration of a great man one never obtains an understanding of his importance and his attainments, that it is therefore useless mischief to study in him things which could just as well be found in the first comer. However, this criticism is so clearly unjust that it can only be grasped when viewed as a pretext and a disguise for something. As a matter of fact pathography does not aim at making comprehensible the attainments of the great man; no one should really be blamed for not doing something which one never promised. The real motives for the opposition are quite different. One finds them when one bears in mind that biographers are fixed on their heroes in quite a peculiar manner. Frequently they take the hero as the object of study because, for reasons of their personal emotional life, they bear him a special affection from the very outset. They then devote themselves to a work of idealization which strives to enroll the great men among their infantile models, and to revive through him, as it were, the infantile conception of the father. For the sake of this wish they wipe out the individual features in his physiognomy, they rub out the traces of his life's struggle with inner and outer resistances, and do not tolerate in him anything of human weakness or imperfection; they then give us a cold, strange, ideal form instead of the man to whom we could feel distantly related. It is to be regretted that they do this, for they thereby sacrifice the truth to an illusion, and for the sake of their infantile phantasies they let slip the opportunity to penetrate into the most attractive secrets of human nature.”

LifeArtistSufferingMischiefPathologyDa Vinci
Book:Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood
Create image

“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.”

ThinkingLifeNeedsShouldImportantMatterChoicesFoundNatureDecisionKnowledgeLearningImportanceManagementIntuitionProfessionUnconsciousDecision MakingMatesMinorsPersonal LifeMaking DecisionsDecisions MadeImportant DecisionsPros And ConsChoices And DecisionsPersonal Decisions
Author:Sigmund Freud
Create image

“The expectation that every neurotic phenomenon can be cured may, I suspect, be derived from the layman's belief that the neuroses are something quite unnecessary which have no right whatever to exist. Whereas in fact they are severe, constitutionally fixed illnesses, which rarely restrict themselves to only a few attacks but persist as a rule over long periods throughout life.”

LifeMayLongFactsBeliefPeriodsExpectationsIllnessPsychologicalFixedSuspectsPhenomenonUnnecessaryPersistSevereNeuroticNeurosisLayman
Book:New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
Create image

“The goal of all life is death”

LifeLife IsGoalEulogy
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…
Create image

“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.”

LifeHumansMadeTogetherIndividualForceCommunityUnitedCommonStrongerRemainsMajorityHuman LifeOppositionBrutesBrute Force
Book:The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud
Create image