# Sigmund Freud's best quotes – and the cigar he never mentioned

From 'the royal road to the unconscious' and 'Where id is, there shall ego be' to his line about the Nazis burning his books: Sigmund Freud's real words with their source, plus the famous cigar quote that is apocryphal.

- 264 votes · 12 items
- Mar 21, 2023 · couchpotato_little
- https://even.best/en/l/4695/sigmund-freud-s-best-quotes-and-the-cigar-he-never-mentioned

## Top 12

1. **Where id is, there shall ego be.** (25 · ▲29 ▼4) — New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1933).
2. **The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.** (22 · ▲25 ▼3) — The Interpretation of Dreams (1900).
3. **Analogies prove nothing, that is quite true, but they can make one feel more at home.** (20 · ▲23 ▼3) — New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1933).
4. **The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.** (16 · ▲20 ▼4) — The Future of an Illusion (1927).
5. **What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.** (16 · ▲17 ▼1) — Letter to Ernest Jones, 1933, after the Nazi book burnings.
6. **Aggressiveness was not created by property.** (15 · ▲19 ▼4) — Civilization and Its Discontents (1930).
7. **How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.** (15 · ▲16 ▼1) — Letter to his fiancée Martha Bernays, 27 June 1882.
8. **One might compare the relation of the ego to the id with that between a rider and his horse.** (13 · ▲19 ▼6) — New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1933).
9. **He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret.** (12 · ▲17 ▼5) — Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria ('Dora', 1905).
10. **Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.** (11 · ▲12 ▼1) — Apocryphal: no source in his writings or letters, as the psychologist Alan C. Elms showed in 2001.
11. **Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.** (10 · ▲14 ▼4) — Letter to Wilhelm Fliess, 1897.
12. **Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.** (9 · ▲13 ▼4) — Letter to Carl Jung, 1906.

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