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Quotations

"...admittedly an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological ... At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of his senses, a man who is in love declares that 'I' and 'you' are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact."

"Civilization, therefore, obtains mastery over the individual's dangerous desire for aggression by weakening and disarming it and by setting up an agency within him to watch over it, like a garrison in a conquered city."

"One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be 'happy' is not included in the plan of 'Creation'."

"Happiness, in the reduced sense in which we recognize it as possible, is a problem of the economics of the individual's libido."

"The question of the purpose of human life has been raised countless times; it has never received a satisfactory answer and perhaps does not admit of one."

"...readiness for a universal love of mankind and the world represents the highest standpoint which man can reach. Even at this early stage of the discussion I should like to bring forward my two main objections to this view. A love that does not discriminate seems to me to forfeit a part of its own value, by doing an injustice to its object; and secondly, not all men are worthy of love."

"Man has become, so to speak, a God with artificial limbs." (29)

"Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as 'right' in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as brute force."