From error to error one discovers the entire truth. Sigmund Freud More Quotes by Sigmund Freud More Quotes From Sigmund Freud We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast. Sigmund Freud enjoymentintensemade Our unconscious, then, does not believe in its own death; it behaves as if it were immortal. It knows nothing that is negative; in it contradictories coincide. This may be the secret of heroism. Sigmund Freud philosophybelieveart Taboo restrictions are distinct from religious or moral prohibitions. They are not based upon any divine ordinance, but may be said to impose themselves on their own account. They differ from moral prohibitions in that they fall into no system that declares quite generally that certain abstinences must be observed and gives reasons for that necessity. Sigmund Freud religiousgivingfall 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. Sigmund Freud libertyjusticecivilization What is a totem? It is as a rule an animal (whether edible and harmless or dangerous and feared) and more rarely a plant or a natural phenomenon (such as rain or water), which stands in a peculiar relation to the whole clan. In the first place, the totem is the common ancestor of the clan; at the same time it is their guardian spirit and helper, which sends them oracles and, if dangerous to others, recognizes and spares its own children. Sigmund Freud rainanimalchildren No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed. Sigmund Freud halfstruggleevil The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief. Sigmund Freud religiousmenreligion In almost every place where we find totems we also find a law against persons of the same totem having sexual relations with one another and consequently against their marrying. This, then, is 'exogamy', an institution related to totemism. Sigmund Freud totemsinstitutionslaw Every man has a right over his own life and war destroys lives that were full of promise; it forces the individual into situations that shame his manhood, obliging him to murder fellow men, against his will. Sigmund Freud menwarpromise After all, we did not invent symbolism; it is a universal age-old activity of the human imagination. Sigmund Freud symbolismimaginationage The whole thing [religion] is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. Sigmund Freud atheistattitudereality No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere. Sigmund Freud would-begivingscience Religion originates in the child's and young mankind's fears and need for help. It cannot be otherwise. Sigmund Freud helpingchildrenneeds Only the real, rare, true scientific minds can endure doubt, which is attached to all our knowledge. Sigmund Freud realdoubtmind At first the analysing physician could do no more than discover the unconscious material that was concealed from the patient, put it together, and, at the right moment, communicate it to him. Psychoanalysis was then first and foremost an art of interpreting. Since this did not solve the therapeutic problem, a further aim quickly came in view: to oblige the patient to confirm the analyst's construction from his own memory. Sigmund Freud viewsmemoriesart 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. Sigmund Freud communitygivingreality Towards the outside, at any rate, the ego seems to maintain clear and sharp lines of demarcation. There is only one state -- admittedly an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological -- in which it does not do this. At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of his senses, a man who is in love declares that "I" and "you" are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact. Sigmund Freud egolovemen The psychoanalysis of individual human beings, however, teaches us with quite special insistence that the god of each of them is formed in the likeness of his father, that his personal relation to God depends on his relation to his father in the flesh and oscillates and changes along with that relation, and that at bottom God is nothing other than an exalted father. Sigmund Freud specialgodfather Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires. Sigmund Freud strengthspiritualdeath Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor. Sigmund Freud intellectuallyingpeople
