“No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere.”

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

Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.

Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.

It is not attention that the child is seeking, but love.

Where id was, there ego shall be.

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

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

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

When one does not have what one wants, one must want what one has.

The behavior of a human being in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of his other modes of reaction in life.

Humanity is in the highest degree irrational, so that there is no prospect of influencing it by reasonable arguments. Against prejudice one can do nothing.

The only shame in masturbation is the shame of not doing it well.

A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.

Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.

I have found little ‘good’ about human beings. In my experience, most of them are trash.

The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.