Quote collection
464 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The impression forces itself upon one that men measure by false standards, that everyone seeks power, success, riches for himself, and admires others who attain them, while undervaluing the truly precious thing in life."
"One must not be mean with affections; what is spent of the funds is renewed in the spending itself. Left untouched for too long, they diminish imperceptibly or the lock gets rusty; they are there all right but one cannot make use of them."
"The three major mother gods of the Eastern populations seemed to be generating and destroying entities at the same time; both goddesses of life and fertility as well as goddesses of death."
"When the wayfarer whistles in the dark, he may be disavowing his timidity, but he does not see any the more clearly for doing so."
"The effect of the consolations of religion may be compared to that of a narcotic."
"Love can not be much younger than the lust for murder."
"[The child receives impressions like] a photographic exposure that can be developed after any interval of time and transformed into a picture."
"A strong experience in the present awakens in the creative writer a memory of an earlier experience (usually belonging to his childhood) from which there now proceeds a wish which finds its fulfilment in the creative work."
"A piece of creative writing, like a day-dream, is a continuation of, and a substitute for, what was once the play of childhood."
"The genitals themselves have not undergone the development of the rest of the human form in the direction of beauty."
"The Devil would be the best way out as an excuse for God; in that way he would be playing the same part as an agent of economic discharge as the Jew does in the world of the Aryan ideal. But even so, one can hold God responsible for the existence of the Devil just as well as for the existence of the wickedness which the Devil embodies."
"Free sexual intercourse between young males and respectable girls" was urgently necessary or society was "doomed to fall a victim to incurable neuroses which reduce the enjoyment of life to a minimum, destroy the marriage relation and bring hereditary ruin on the whole coming generation."
"Yes, America is gigantic, but a gigantic mistake."
"The sexual wishes in regard to the mother become more intense and the father is perceived as an obstacle to the; this gives rise to the Oedipus complex."
"Civilization runs a greater risk if we maintain our present attitude to religion than if we give it up."
"We should picture the instrument that carries our mental functioning as resembling a compound microscope or photographic apparatus."
"It almost looks like analysis were the third of those 'impossible' professions in which one can be quite sure of unsatisfying results. The other two, much older-established, are the bringing up of children and the government of nations."
"When a man has once brought himself to accept uncritically all the absurdities that religious doctrines put before him and even to overlook the contradictions between them, we need not be greatly suprised at the weakness of his intellect."
"Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever."
"One becomes gradually accustomed to a new realization of the nature of 'happiness': one has to assume happiness when Fate does not carry out all its threats simultaneously."