Sigmund Freud

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

What is common in all these dreams is obvious. They are all wish-fulfillments.

The neurotic is a person who has discovered the meaning of life, but not the purpose.

Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.

The narcissism of minor differences.

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love.

The insane are not without reason, but they are without a certain kind of reason.

The replacement of the power of the individual by the power of a community constitutes the decisive step of civilization.

The Oedipus complex is the nuclear complex of all neuroses.

The creative writer does the same as the child at play. He creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously—that is, which he invests with large amounts of affect—while separating it sharply from reality.

Civilized man has exchanged a portion of his possibilities of happiness for a portion of security.

The sexual life of adult women is a 'dark continent' for psychology.

I have found little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.

Man has a primary need to love, to be loved, and to be recognized.

The dream is the (disguised) fulfillment of a (suppressed, repressed) wish.

The completely good man is a myth.

The goal of all life is death.

The ego is that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world.

There are no accidents in the unconscious.

The sexual instinct is the most powerful of all human drives.