Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise

Written by Sigmund Freud 1856–1939 · Austrian neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis
Verified In copyright

Freud wrote it in a private letter to his friend Wilhelm Fliess on 15 October 1897 — the letter in which he first described being “in love with my mother and jealous of my father.” The familiar English wording is the 1954 translation published as The Origins of Psycho-Analysis; Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s 1985 complete edition renders the same sentence “Being totally honest with oneself is a good exercise.”

Last verified 7 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Verified quote & credit

“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise” Sigmund Freud, letter to Wilhelm Fliess, 15 October 1897, in The Origins of Psycho-Analysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes, 1887–1902 (New York: Basic Books, 1954), trans. Eric Mosbacher and James Strachey.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The Freud estate, with the publishers and translators of the 1950 German edition (Imago Publishing Co., London) and the 1954 English edition (Basic Books, New York; Eric Mosbacher and James Strachey)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Sigmund Freud — Austrian neurologist & founder of psychoanalysis. Theme: "Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The letter of 15 October 1897

Work
The Origins of Psycho-Analysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes, 1887–1902
Written
Letter from Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 15 October 1897 (known as Letter 71)
First published
German, as Aus den Anfängen der Psychoanalyse (Imago Publishing Co., London, 1950); English, Basic Books, New York, 1954
Translation
Eric Mosbacher & James Strachey, 1954 (eds. Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, Ernst Kris)

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise. One idea of general value has occurred to me… letter continues

The opening sentence is the wording Wikiquote cites to Origins of Psychoanalysis ↗; the continuation is as quoted in George Steiner’s Nostalgia for the Absolute. In Masson’s 1985 translation ↗ the same letter opens “My self-analysis is in fact the most essential thing I have at present” and renders the honesty line with “totally” in place of “entirely.”

German first edition, scanned
Read Aus den Anfängen der Psychoanalyse (Imago, 1950)
The Origins of Psycho-Analysis (Basic Books, 1954) at the Internet Archive

How we traced it

In copyright

Freud wrote the letter in 1897, but a letter is not published by being written. It first appeared in print in 1950 in German ↗ and in 1954 in English — both well after the 1931 United States public-domain cut-off — so the letter as published and the English translation are each treated here as in copyright. The English sentence people share is separately the translators’ work.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The name is right. The words are a translator's.

This is one of the rare famous-name quotes that survives inspection: Freud really wrote it, on a date we can name. What does not survive inspection is the idea that these are his words in any literal sense, or that he meant them as a standalone maxim.

Eric Mosbacher & James Strachey, 1954 translation

Freud wrote in German. “Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise” is the English of the 1954 edition — the “authorised translation by Eric Mosbacher and James Strachey” ↗. No quote site that reprints it says so.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, 1985 variant

Masson’s complete edition of the correspondence translates the same sentence as “Being totally honest with oneself is a good exercise” ↗. Both are faithful; neither is Freud’s own English, because there wasn’t one.

Inspirational quote sites context stripped

Reprinted as a free-floating life lesson. In the letter it is a preface — Freud steadying himself before telling Fliess he had found in his own case “being in love with my mother and jealous of my father” ↗. The honesty he is recommending is a specific and uncomfortable one.

Verdict: genuinely Freud, from his letter to Wilhelm Fliess of 15 October 1897, cited in Wikiquote’s sourced section to Origins of Psychoanalysis ↗ — but the English sentence is a 1954 translator’s, and the letter it comes from is anything but a motivational poster.

Context

Why it mattered

Freud wrote this line in the year after his father’s death, in the middle of the self-analysis that Wikipedia describes as prompted by the heart irregularities, disturbing dreams and depression that followed that loss. The letter opens with him telling Fliess that the self-analysis is “the most essential thing I have at present.”

The sentence about honesty is not a self-help maxim — it is Freud bracing himself. Immediately after it comes the admission that made him famous: that he had found in his own case the phenomenon of being in love with his mother and jealous of his father, and now considered it a universal event in early childhood. What we quote as a tidy aphorism is the throat-clearing before the most consequential confession in the history of psychoanalysis.

My self-analysis is in fact the most essential thing I have at present.

How a letter Freud wanted destroyed came to be published

Freud ordered that his correspondence with Fliess be destroyed. Wikipedia’s account is blunt: the correspondence “is known today only because Marie Bonaparte purchased Freud’s letters to Fliess and refused to permit their destruction.”

The rescued letters first reached print in German in 1950, as Aus den Anfängen der Psychoanalyse: Briefe an Wilhelm Fliess, Abhandlungen und Notizen aus den Jahren 1887–1902 (Imago Publishing Co., London), edited by Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud and Ernst Kris. The English translation by Eric Mosbacher and James Strachey followed in 1954. That publication history is why this 1897 sentence is still under copyright — and why the version everyone shares is a translator’s English, not Freud’s German.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Truth Character Growth

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Sigmund Freud — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Sourced quotations, 1890s section: this line cited to the letter to Wilhelm Fliess of 15 October 1897, as quoted in Origins of Psychoanalysis.
The Origins of Psycho-Analysis (Basic Books, 1954)archive.org

The Internet Archive copy of the 1954 English edition in which this wording appears.
Aus den Anfängen der Psychoanalyse (Imago, 1950)archive.org

Scan of the German first edition of the Fliess letters — the original publication of the 1897 correspondence.
Freud–Fliess letters (Masson translation)dhspriory.org

Text of the 15 October 1897 letter in Masson's 1985 translation, where the sentence reads “Being totally honest with oneself is a good exercise.”
Catalogue record: the 1950 German first editionwellcomecollection.org

Wellcome Collection record confirming Imago Pub. Co., London, [1950] as the first publication of the letters.
Review of The Origins of Psycho-Analysis (1955)cambridge.org

Journal of Mental Science review whose full title records the edition's “Authorised translation by Eric Mosbacher and James Strachey.”

The man who wrote it

Sigmund Freud

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.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Freud, Sigmund. Letter to Wilhelm Fliess, 15 October 1897. In The Origins of Psycho-Analysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes, 1887–1902, edited by Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, and Ernst Kris, translated by Eric Mosbacher and James Strachey. New York: Basic Books, 1954. First published in German as Aus den Anfängen der Psychoanalyse (London: Imago, 1950).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise’?” Last verified 7 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/being-entirely-honest-with-oneself-is-a-good-exercise/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied