Sigmund Freud is a world-renowned pioneer in the field of psychoanalysis. He was a psychiatrist who developed many theories about the human mind and its workings. His work has been studied and discussed for many years, and his quotes are still relevant today. This article will look at some of his most famous quotes and discuss what they mean. We will also explore his thoughts on psychiatry and psychoanalysis.
About Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist who created psychoanalysis, a clinical method that treats mental disorders by having patients talk with psychoanalysts. Born to Jewish Galician parents in Freiberg, which is now part of the Czech Republic but used to be under Austrian rule.
In 1881, at only 25 years old, he became a doctor of medicine. In 1885 he was appointed Lecturer in Neuropathology at the University of Vienna. In 1938 Hitler annexed Austria, and Freud, aged 82, escaped alone to London on the day war was declared; his daughter Anna had already emigrated there.
He died of cancer on 23 September 1939. Sigmund Freud remains one of the most influential figures in psychology and psychiatry, even though many of his ideas have been challenged since they were first proposed by him over a century ago.
This is because he was the first to bring together vast amounts of knowledge about human behavior from many different sources, including biology, physiology, anthropology, and literature, into a coherent theory about how our minds work that can be used to help us understand ourselves better.
Even though further research has led to many modifications being made to Freud’s ideas, they still provide a useful framework for understanding much of human behavior that would otherwise be difficult to explain.
Here are the best Sigmund Freud Quotes
Today, Freud’s theories form the basis for much research and clinical practice in fields such as psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy. Let’s take a look at some of his most famous quotes:
1. “One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”― Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud was one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. His ideas about psychology and human behavior have shaped our understanding of the mind and helped shape psychiatry.
This quote reflects Freud’s belief that the years spent struggling to achieve success are often the most rewarding. The quote suggests that, in retrospect, we will see the value in our struggles and appreciate the lessons we’ve learned along the way.
2. “Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”― Sigmund Freud
3. “Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”― Sigmund Freud
4. “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.”― Sigmund Freud
5. “We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love.”― Sigmund Freud
6. “Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.”― Sigmund Freud
7. “Where does a thought go when it’s forgotten?”― Sigmund Freud
8. “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
9. “A woman should soften but not weaken a man.”― Sigmund Freud
10. “Religious doctrines … are all illusions, they do not admit of proof, and no one can be compelled to consider them as true or to believe in them.”― Sigmund Freud
11. “Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me.”― Sigmund Freud
In this quote, Freud acknowledges poets’ impact on his life and work. He believes that poets offer a unique perspective on the world that can help to illuminate our own experiences. For Freud, poetry is a way of seeing the world often hidden from us. By reading poems, we can gain insight into our lives and find new ways to understand the world around us.
12. “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
13. “Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have , so to speak , pawned a part of their narcissism.”― Sigmund Freud
14. “Immorality, no less than morality, has at all times found support in religion.”― Sigmund Freud
15. “The madman is a dreamer awake.”― Sigmund Freud
16. “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
17. “Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.”― Sigmund Freud
18. “It is that we are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object or its love.”― Sigmund Freud
19. “The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life.”― Sigmund Freud
20. “He does not believe that does not live according to his belief.”― Sigmund Freud
21. “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
Freud believed that the human psyche was composed of three main elements: the id, the ego, and the super-ego. He believed that the id was the primal, instinctual part of the mind that operated on the pleasure principle. The ego was the rational, logical part of the mind that operated on the reality principle.
The super-ego was the moral, ethical part of the mind that operated on the principle of self-control. Freud believed that our conscious minds were only aware of a small fraction of what was happening in our unconscious minds. He believed that our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors were influenced by unconscious conflict.
Freud’s theory of psychosexual development proposed that children progress through different stages of development, during which they focus on different erogenous zones. He believed that if these stages are not completed successfully, a person might become fixated at a certain stage, and their adult personality would be shaped by this fixation.
Freud’s theories have been both influential and controversial. Many of his ideas have been blended into mainstream psychology, but his theory of sexuality is still considered to be somewhat taboo.
22. “Where the questions of religion are concerned people are guilty of every possible kind of insincerity and intellectual misdemeanor.”― Sigmund Freud
23. “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.”― Sigmund Freud
24. “Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.”― Sigmund Freud
25. “My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throw away without reflection.”― Sigmund Freud
26. “The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.”― Sigmund Freud
27. “Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.”― Sigmund Freud
28. “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.”― Sigmund Freud
29. “The creative writer does the same as the child at play; he creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously.”― Sigmund Freud
30. “What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books. ”― Sigmund Freud
31. “The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief.”― Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud’s quote suggests that as people gain more knowledge, they are less likely to believe in religion. This is because religion is based on faith, and when people have evidence that disproves religious teachings, their faith is shaken.
Additionally, religious beliefs often rely on things that are taken on faith, such as the existence of an afterlife or the benevolence of a god. When people are exposed to new ideas and philosophies contradicting these beliefs, they may question their religious convictions.
Ultimately, Freud’s quote suggests that knowledge and religion are at odds with each other, and as people become more knowledgeable, their religious beliefs are likely to decline.
32. “Loneliness and darkness have just robbed me of my valuables.”― Sigmund Freud
33. “Where id is, there shall ego be.”― Sigmund Freud
34. “The interpretation of Dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.”― Sigmund Freud
35. “A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.”― Sigmund Freud
36. “Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind,
because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.”― Sigmund Freud
37. “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.”― Sigmund Freud
38. “How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.”― Sigmund Freud
39. “The ego is not master in its own house.”― Sigmund Freud
40. “Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.”― Sigmund Freud
41. “Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea,they become powerless when they oppose it.”― Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud’s quote suggests that men derive strength from believing in a strongly-held idea. When they encounter an opposing idea, their belief may become weaker. This is because opposing ideas challenge our existing beliefs and force us to question whether they are valid.
In many cases, we may find that our original beliefs are no longer as strong as we thought them to be. As a result, we may feel less certain and more powerless. In other words, our strength as individuals comes from our ability to stand behind our convictions. When those convictions are challenged, we may feel weaker and less certain.
42. “A love that does not discriminate seems to me to forfeit a part of its value, by doing an injustice to its object; and secondly, not all men are worthy of love.”― Sigmund Freud
43. “Instinct of love toward an object demands a mastery to obtain it, and if a person feels they can’t control the object or feel threatened by it, they act negatively toward it.”― Sigmund Freud
44. “Public self is a conditioned construct of the inner psychological self.”― Sigmund Freud
45. “There are no mistakes.”― Sigmund Freud
46. “It is a predisposition of human nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it.”― Sigmund Freud
47. “Love in the form of longing and deprivation lowers the self regard.”― Sigmund Freud
48. “No neurotic harbors thoughts of suicide which are not murderous impulses against others redirected upon himself.”― Sigmund Freud
49. “Conservatism, however, is too often a welcome excuse for lazy minds, loath to adapt themselves to fast changing conditions.”― Sigmund Freud
50. “The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter.”― Sigmund Freud
51. “You wanted to kill your father in order to be your father yourself. Now you are your father, but a dead father.”― Sigmund Freud
The quote is from Sigmund Freud, about the Oedipus complex. The Oedipus complex is when a child has sexual desires for a parent of the opposite sex. In the quote, Freud says that the child wants to kill their father because they want to take his place and be with their mother.
The child doesn’t realize they can’t have both, so they kill their father and take his place. But in doing so, they become their father and are now dead to their mother. This is a very simplistic view of the Oedipus complex, but it gives some insight into Freud’s thinking.
52. “I had thought about cocaine in a kind of day-dream.”― Sigmund Freud
53. “The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.”― Sigmund Freud
54. “Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor.”― Sigmund Freud
55. “We are so constituted that we can gain intense pleasure only from the contrast, and only very little from the condition itself.”― Sigmund Freud
56. “The more perfect a person is on the outside, the more demons they have on the inside.”― Sigmund Freud
57. “America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.”― Sigmund Freud
58. “Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power.”― Sigmund Freud
59. “In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself.”― Sigmund Freud
60. “Smoking is indispensable if one has nothing to kiss.”― Sigmund Freud
61. “What is common in all these dreams is obvious. They completely satisfy wishes excited during the day which remain unrealized. They are simply and undisguisedly realizations of wishes.”― Sigmund Freud
Freud’s quote speaks to the power of dreams as a way to fulfill our unmet desires. Dreams allow us to play out scenarios we cannot experience in our waking lives. In many cases, these scenarios are based on wish fulfillment – that is, they allow us to fulfill desires that we have not been able to act on in real life.
This can be due to a number of factors, including social norms, personal inhibitions, or practical limitations. Dreams provide a space for us to explore our deepest desires without having to worry about the consequences. As such, they can be a valuable source of insight into our psyches.
62. “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.”― Sigmund Freud
63. “A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it.”― Sigmund Freud
64. “Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.”― Sigmund Freud
65. “One thing only do I know for certain and that is that man’s judgments of value follow directly his wishes for happiness-that, accordingly, they are an attempt to support his illusions with arguments.”― Sigmund Freud
66. “Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God.”― Sigmund Freud
67. “We are what we are because we have been what we have been, and what is needed for solving the problems of human life and motives is not moral estimates but more knowledge.”― Sigmund Freud
68. “Anatomy is destiny.”― Sigmund Freud
69. “Where such men love they have no desire and where they desire they cannot love.”― Sigmund Freud
70. “He who knows how to wait need make no concessions.”― Sigmund Freud
71. “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
Memory is a funny thing. It’s often highly unreliable, yet we tend to believe what it tells us. Freud’s quote speaks to the human tendency to put too much trust in our memories. We always forget things, yet we still expect our memories to be perfect.
This can lead to all sorts of problems, especially when it comes to eyewitness testimony. If we can’t trust our memory to recall simple details accurately, how can we expect it to accurately remember something as complicated as a crime? The answer, of course, is that we can’t. Our memories are fallible and should not be taken at face value.
72. “It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of instinct….”― Sigmund Freud
73. “I never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me as a member”― Sigmund Freud
Let’s Wind Up…
Sigmund Freud was a towering figure in the world of psychology, and his quotes are as relevant today as they were in his time. His insights into the human mind still provide valuable guidance for understanding ourselves and others. We can all learn something from Freud’s wisdom and apply it to our own lives in order to create happier, more fulfilling relationships with those around us.