Sigmund Freud

The great question that has never been answered, and which I myself 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.

The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.

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.

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. This is one of the few points in which one may be optimistic about the future of mankind.

Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.

The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.

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 cubs.

Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.

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

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

Where id was, there ego shall be.

No one who has tasted the sweets of psychoanalysis will ever be able to do without it.

The aim of psychoanalysis is to strengthen the ego, to make it more independent of the super-ego, to widen its field of perception and enlarge its organization, so that it can appropriate fresh portions of the id. Where id was, there ego shall be. It is a work of culture—not unlike the draining of the Zuider Zee.

The ego is not master in its own house.

One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.

From error to error one discovers the entire truth.

The more the parents of a child are themselves involved in neurotic conflicts, the more likely it is that they will seek to resolve these conflicts through their child.

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.