Sigmund Freud People Quotations

People are made either to sufffer or to destroy.

A string of reproaches against other people leads one to suspect the existence of a string of self-reproaches with the same content.

Against the suffering which may come upon one from human relationships the readiest safeguard is voluntary isolation, keeping oneself aloof from other people. The happiness which can be achieved along this path is, as we see, the happiness of quietness. Against the dreaded external world one can only defend oneself by some kind of turning away from it, if one intends to solve the task by oneself.

The aim of psychoanalysis is to relieve people of their neurotic unhappiness so that they can be normally unhappy.

Religion is the process of unconscious wish fulfillment, where, for certain people, if the process did not take place it would put them in self-danger of coming to mental harm, being unable to cope with the idea of a godless, purposeless life.

The great majority of people have a strong need for authority which they can admire, to which they can submit, and which dominates and sometimes even ill-treats them.

Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor.

I think that it is a good plan to bear in mind that people were in the habit of dreaming before there was such a thing as psychoanalysis.

It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement -- that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.

History is just new people making old mistakes.

If the truth of religious doctrines is dependent on an inner experience that bears witness to the truth, what is one to make of the many people who do not have that experience?

The essence of analysis is surprise. When people are themselves surprised by what they say, that's when they are really making some progress.

The adoption of the required attitude of mind towards ideas that seem to emerge "of their own free will" and the abandonment of the critical function that is normally in operation against them seem to be hard of achievement for some people. The "involuntary thoughts" are liable to release a most violent resistance, which seeks to prevent their emergence. If we may trust that great poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, however, poetic creation must demand an exactly similar attitude.

You can always make a lot of people love one another so long as there are a smaller number outside the group for them to kick.

Were we fully to understand the reasons for other people's behavior, it would all make sense.

Civilized people have exchanged some part of their chances of happiness for a measure of security.