Sigmund Freud

The more primitive a man is, the more he is inclined to believe in magic.

The goal of all life is to return to the inorganic state.

The sexual instinct is not merely a reproductive instinct, but also a pleasure-seeking instinct.

The narcissism of minor differences.

The child's sexual life is polymorphously perverse.

The analysis of dreams is the most reliable method of exploring the unconscious.

The human mind is a battlefield where the forces of Eros and Thanatos are constantly at war.

Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.

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.

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

A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror.

The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.

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

The paranoid is never entirely mistaken.

The psychical, whatever its nature may be, is itself unconscious.

The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious. What I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied.

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

The intention that man should be 'happy' is not included in the plan of 'Creation'.

The moment a man questions the meaning and value of life, he is sick.

The libido is like a river; if it is dammed up, it will break through somewhere.