Sigmund Freud Quotes

The beast in us must be[78] wheedled: ethic is necessary, that we may not be torn to pieces.

Without the restraints of religion and social worship, men become savages much sooner than savages become civilized by means of religion and civil government.

A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.

Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.

The adult is the enemy of the child because of the awful process of civilizing this thing that, when it is born, is an animal with no manners, no moral sense at all.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

Civilization rests on the fact that most people do the right thing most of the time.

In antiquity the sage kings recognized that men's nature is bad and that their tendencies were not being corrected and their lawlessness controlled.

The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.

Man is the only animal that learns by being hypocritical. He pretends to be polite and then, eventually, he becomes polite.

All laws are an attempt to domesticate the natural ferocity of the species.

When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.

Civilization depends on morality.

The intelligence which has converted the brother of the wolf into the faithful guardian of the flock ought to be able to do something towards curbing the instincts of savagery in civilized men.

Civilization largely consists in hiding human nature. When the barbarian learns to hide it we account him enlightened.

Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason.

Since the same human mire remains beneath, does not all civilization reduce itself to the superiority of smelling nice and living well?

We are all civilized people, wich means that we are all savages at heart but observing a few amenities of civilized behaviour.

"Civilization rests on two things," said Hitzig; "the discovery that fermentation produces alcohol, and voluntary ability to inhibit defecation. And I put it to you, where would this splendidly civilized occasion be without both?"

Too much society makes a man frivolous; too little, a savage.

Shame and guilt are noble emotions essential in the maintenance of civilized society, and vital for the development of some of the most refined and elegant qualities of human potential.

The real index of civilization is when people are kinder than they need to be.

deferring gratification is a good definition of being civilized.

Valentine had long ago observed that in a society that expected chastity and fidelity, like Lusitania, the adolescents who controlled and channeled their youthful passions were the ones who grew up to be both strong and civilized. Adolescents in such a community who were either too weak to control themselves or too contemptuous of society's norms to try usually ended up being either sheep or wolves- either mindless members of the herd or predators who took what they could and gave nothing.