Quotes by Sigmund Freud

About Sigmund Freud:

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist, now known as the father of psychoanalysis. Freud qualified as a doctor of medicine at the University of Vienna in 1881, and then carried out research into cerebral palsy, aphasia and microscopic neuroanatomy at the Vienna General Hospital. Upon completing his habilitation in 1885, he was appointed a docent in neuropathology in the same year and became an affiliated professor (professor extraordinarius) in 1902.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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.

Sigmund Freud

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.

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

Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power.

Sigmund Freud

The behavior of a human being in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of his other modes of reaction in life.

Sigmund Freud

Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines ...

Sigmund Freud

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

Sigmund Freud

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

Sigmund Freud

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.

Sigmund Freud

A man's heterosexuality will not put up with any homosexuality, and vice versa.

Sigmund Freud

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

Sigmund Freud

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

Sigmund Freud

Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.

Sigmund Freud

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.

Sigmund Freud

The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the powerful obstacle to culture.

Sigmund Freud

Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.

Sigmund Freud

Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent.

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

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

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Sigmund Freud

Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.

Sigmund Freud

Author Bio

  • NameSigmund Freud
  • DescriptionAustrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis
  • AliasesSigismund Schlomo Freud; Freud
  • BornMay 6, 1856
  • DiedSeptember 23, 1939
  • CountryAustria
  • ProfessionPsychoanalyst; Neurologist; Science Writer; Essayist
  • AwardsGoethe Prize