Quotations by:
    Freud, Sigmund


The worst egoist is the person to whom the thought has never occurred that he might be one.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Austrian psychoanalyst and neurologist
“Notebook of Aphorisms” (1871)
 
Added on 17-Nov-09 | Last updated 17-Nov-09
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A person in love is humble. A person who loves has, so to speak, forfeited a part of his narcissism.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Austrian psychoanalyst and neurologist
“On Narcissism: An Introduction [Zur Einführung des Narzißmus],” ch. 3 (1914) [tr. Strachey]
    (Source)

Alternate translations:

The lover is humble. He who loves has, so to speak, forfeited a part of his narcissism.
[tr. Baines/Riviere]

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

 
Added on 4-Nov-22 | Last updated 7-Nov-22
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What no human soul desires there is no need to prohibit; it is automatically excluded. The very emphasis of the commandment, Thou shalt not kill, makes it certain that we spring from an endless ancestry of murderers, with whom the lust for killing was in the blood, as possibly it is to this day with ourselves.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Austrian psychoanalyst and neurologist
“Reflections upon War and Death” (2) (1915) [tr. Mayne (1963)]
 
Added on 5-May-11 | Last updated 5-May-11
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The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Austrian psychoanalyst and neurologist
(Attributed)
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 1-Feb-04
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If the fire rages uncontrolled in a house, we call it a disastrous conflagration; if it burns in a smelting furnace, we call it a useful industrial force. In other words, our drives and impulses as they live within us are neither good nor bad, right nor wrong.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Austrian psychoanalyst and neurologist
(Attributed)

Quoted in Helen Walker Puner, Freud: His Life and His Mind, ch. 10 (1947).
 
Added on 7-Dec-11 | Last updated 7-Dec-11
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Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Austrian psychoanalyst and neurologist
(Spurious)

First cited in the US in 1950, over a decade after his death.  No earlier citation is found than that, and no record has been found in Freud's works (translated or original). More discussion here.

 
Added on 25-Aug-11 | Last updated 25-Aug-11
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What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Austrian psychoanalyst and neurologist
Letter to Ernest Jones (Jan 1933)
    (Source)

Regarding Nazi book burnings in Germany. Reprinted in Jones, Sigmund Freud: Life and Work, Vol. 3, Part 1, ch. 4 (1957).
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 29-Jul-21
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