Sigmund Freud

The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

America is a mistake, a gigantic mistake, but a mistake that one makes with pleasure.

No one who, like me, has had to steer a course between the Scylla of neurosis and the Charybdis of psychosis can fail to appreciate the value of a good cigar.

The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Ultimately, after endlessly repeated rebuffs, it succeeds.

The only way to escape the effects of the past is to deny it.

A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes, but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what direct his conduct in the world.

The poor ego has a still harder time of it; it has to serve three harsh masters, and it has to do its best to reconcile the claims of all three.

The time comes when we have to give up the pleasure of being loved for the pleasure of loving.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

The great problem of civilization is to find a way to reconcile the individual's demands for freedom with the demands of society for order.

The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life.

We are never so helpless as when we are in love.

The only good thing about being old is that you don't have to worry about getting old.

From the most ancient times, men have been aware of the existence of a 'death instinct.'

No one who, like me, has delved into the deepest recesses of the human mind, can fail to realize that the human mind is a battlefield.

Man has to struggle against the force of his instincts, and against the force of nature, and against the force of his fellow men.

The creative writer does the same as the child at play; he creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously.

The only purpose of life is the purpose that you give it.

What is common in all these cases is the fact that the ego has been forced to give up an object of its libido.