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

Rating:

  rate this quote
Topic: none  help us select a topic for this quote

More quotes from: Sigmund Freud

• "A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would ..."
• "A certain degree of neurosis is of inestimable value as a drive, especially to a ..."
• "A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with ..."
• "America is a mistake, a giant mistake. "
• "America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it ..."
• "Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home. "
• "Anatomy is destiny. "
• "Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise. "
• "Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them. "
• "Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock. "
• "Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single ..."
• "Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one ..."
• "Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to ..."
• "He does not believe that does not live according to his belief . "
• "He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no ..."
• "How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved! "
• "I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a ..."
• "I have found little that is "good" about human beings on the whole. In my ..."
• "If youth knew; if age could. "
• "Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy ..."
• "It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation ..."

• "Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom ..."
• "Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness. "
• "Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on ..."
• "Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine. "
• "Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea they become powerless when ..."
• "Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are ..."
• "Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity. "
• "Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it ..."
• "No one who has seen a baby sinking back satiated from the breast and falling ..."
• "No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that ..."
• "Obviously one must hold oneself responsible for the evil impulses of one's dreams. In what ..."
• "One is very crazy when in love. "
• "Opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity. "
• "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. "
• "The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and ..."
• "The ego is not master in its own house. "
• "The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of ..."
• "The goal of all life is death. "
• "The goal towards which the pleasure principle impels us - of becoming happy - is ..."
• "The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been ..."

• "The impression forces itself upon one that men measure by false standards, that everyone seeks ..."
• "The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there ..."
• "The psychoanalysis of neurotics has taught us to recognize the intimate connection between wetting the ..."
• "The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the ..."
• "We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love. "
• "We have long observed that every neurosis has the result, and therefore probably the purpose, ..."
• "We must reckon with the possibility that something in the nature of the sexual instinct ..."
• "What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the ..."
• "What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now ..."
• "What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of ..."
• "Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of ..."