Sigmund Freud Quotes on Man (13 Quotes)

The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the powerful obstacle to culture.

The tendency of aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man it constitutes the most powerful obstacle to culture.

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.

Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea they become powerless when they oppose it.

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

Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times.

If a man has been his mother's undisputed darling he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings actual success along with it.

One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be 'happy' is not included in the plan of Creation.' ... We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a state of things.

The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief.

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.

Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.

We are threatened with suffering from three directions from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful than any other.

And now look at the great war still devastating Europe think of the colossal brutality, cruelty, and mendacity which is now allowed to spread itself over the civilized world. Do you really believe that a handful of unprincipled placehunters and corrupters of men would have succeeded in letting loose all this latent evil, if the millions of their followers were not also guilty