Theodor Reik Quotations

Nothing said to us, nothing we can learn from others, reaches us so deep as that which we find in ourselves.

The repressed memory is like a noisy intruder being thrown out of the concert hall. You can throw him out, but he will bang on the door and continue to disturb the concert. The analyst opens the door and says, If you promise to behave yourself, you can come back in.

The lover is a monotheist who knows that other people worship different gods but cannot himself imagine that there could be other gods.

Women in general want to be loved for what they are and men for what they accomplish.

Love is an attempt to change a piece of a dream world into reality.

Work and love; these are the basics. Without them there is neurosis.

The man who has never made a fool of himself in love will never be wise in love.

In our civilization, men are afraid that they will not be men enough and women are afraid that they might be considered only women.

We are all in a race for dear life: that is to say, we are fugitives from death.

In order to be happy oneself it is necessary to make at least one other person happy.

In our civilization men are afraid they will not be man enough, and women are afraid that they might be considered only women.

Even the wisest men make fools of themselves about women, and even the most foolish women are wise about men

The secret of human happiness is not in self-seeking but in self-forgetting.

Great innovators and original thinkers and artists attract the wrath of mediocrities as lightning rods draw the flashes.

To express unafraid and unashamed what one really thinks and feels is one of the great consolations of life.

No person loving or admiring himself is alone.

Romance fails us and so do friendships, but the relationship of parent and child, less noisy than all the others, remains indelible and indestructible, the strongest relationship on earth

Women see through each other, but they rarely look into themselves.

The small share of happiness attainable by man exists only insofar as he is able to cease to think of himself.

There is need of variety in sex, but not in love.

It is always possible to approach a goal by a detour.

He [Freud] often said three things were impossible to fulfill completely; healing, education, governing. He limited his goals in analytic treatment to brining the patient to the point where he could work for a living and learn to love.