Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Sigmund Freud Philosopher

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: Austria
  • Born: May 6, 1856
  • Died: Sep 23, 1939

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. He was appointed a university lecturer in neuropathology in 1885 and became an affiliated professor in 1902.

In creating psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference, establishing its central role in the analytic process. Freud’s redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory. His analysis of dreams as wish-fulfillments provided him with models for the clinical analysis of symptom formation and the mechanisms of repression as well as for elaboration of his theory of the unconscious as an agency disruptive of conscious states of mind.

We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love.

Love and work... work and love, that's all there is.

One is very crazy when in love.

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

The goal of all life is death.

Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.

Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient's ego freedom to decide one way or another.

Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.

America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.

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

I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.

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

Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.

Time spent with cats is never wasted.

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

Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.

If youth knew if age could.

Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.

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

Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea they become powerless when they oppose it.

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.

The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.

Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

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

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.