Sigmund Freud Quotes (183 quotes)

“We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love.”
―Sigmund Freud

“We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts.”
―Sigmund Freud

Source/Notes:
The Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (1961 edition)

“We have long observed that every neurosis has the result, and therefore probably the purpose, of forcing the patient out of real life, of alienating him from actuality.”
―Sigmund Freud

“What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.”
―Sigmund Freud

Source/Notes:
Letter to Ernest Jones (1933), as quoted in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993) by Robert Andrews, p. 779

“What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree.”
―Sigmund Freud

“Where id was, there ego shall be.”
―Sigmund Freud

Source/Notes:
Abstracts of The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (1971 edition)

“Yes, America is gigantic, but a gigantic mistake.”
―Sigmund Freud

“I am actually not at all a man of science, not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador — an adventurer, if you want it translated—with all the curiosity, daring, and tenacity characteristic of a man of this sort.”
―Sigmund Freud

Source/Notes:
Letter to Wilhelm Fliess, Feb. 1, 1900. The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904 (1985).

“I do not doubt that it would be easier for fate to take away your suffering than it would for me. But you will see for yourself that much has been gained if we succeed in turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness.”
―Sigmund Freud

Source/Notes:
Studies on Hysteria (1895), (co-written with Josef Breuer) as translated by Nicola Luckhurst (2004)

“I do not in the least underestimate bisexuality... I expect it to provide all further enlightenment.”
―Sigmund Freud

Source/Notes:
Letter to Wilhelm Fliess (25 March 1898)

“And now, the main thing! As far as I can see, my next work will be called Human Bisexuality. It will go to the root of the problem and say the last word it may be granted to say — the last and the most profound.”
―Sigmund Freud

Source/Notes:
Letter to Wilhelm Fliess (7 August 1901)