Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Anatomy is destiny.

Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me.

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

The goal of all life is death.

One must not be mean with the affections what is spent of the fund is renewed in the spending itself.

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

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.

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

One is very crazy when in love.

Innately, children seem to have little true realistic anxiety. They will run along the brink of water, climb on the window sill, play with sharp objects and with fire, in short, do everything that is bound to damage them and to worry those in charge of them, that is wholly the result of education; for they cannot be allowed to make the instructive experiences themselves.

I have found little that is good about human beings. In my experience most of them, on the whole, are trash.

We are certainly getting ahead; if I am Moses, then you are Joshua and will take possession of the promised land of psychiatry, which I shall only be able to glimpse from afar.

If you want to endure life, prepare yourself for death.

America is a mistake, a giant mistake.

Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.

From error to error, one discovers the entire truth.