Sigmund Freud

1856–1939 · Austrian neurologist & founder of psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was, in Wikipedia’s summary, “an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis.” After his father died in 1896 he fell into a spell of heart irregularities, disturbing dreams and depression that prompted a self-analysis of his own dreams and childhood memories — the private project that produced this sentence. Through those years his sounding board was the Berlin physician Wilhelm Fliess (1858–1928), whom he had met in 1887 and with whom he kept up the extensive correspondence that charts psychoanalysis in its earliest, unguarded form.

Traced to source

9 quotes we’ve traced to Sigmund Freud

“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise”

Verified

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful”

Verified

“The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind”

Verified

“The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'”

Attributed

“I awoke, only to find that the rest of the world is still asleep”

Disputed

“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”

Disputed

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

Disputed

“This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever”

Disputed

“Time spent with cats is never wasted”

Disputed

Not actually Sigmund Freud

Often misattributed to Sigmund Freud

Famous lines widely pinned on Sigmund Freud that we’ve traced to someone else.

“A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity”

actually Don B. Kates Jr. (his sentence, inverted)

“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes”

actually @debihope

“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”

actually Unknown

“The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water”

actually Woods Hutchinson (phrasing) & G. Stanley Hall (simile)

“This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever”

Unknown — misattributed to Sigmund Freud

“Time spent with cats is never wasted”

actually Origin unknown (a 21st-century saying)

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Thought Sigmund Freud said something else?

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