Sigmund Freud Civilization Quotations

The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.

We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts.

It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.

A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.

The first requisite of civilization is that of justice.

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

The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

...the first man to use abusive language instead of his fists was the founder of civilization.

the first man to use abusive language instead of his fists was the founder of civilization.

Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.

Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.

The price of civilization is instinctual renunciation.

Experience teaches that for most people there is a limit beyond which their constitution cannot comply with the demands of civilization. All who wish to reach a higher standard than their constitution will allow, fall victims to neurosis. It would have been better for them if they could have remained less "perfect".

The different religions have never overlooked the part played by the sense of guilt in civilization. What is more, they come forward with a claim...to save mankind from this sense of guilt, which they call sin.

No matter how much restriction civilization imposes on the individual, he nevertheless finds some way to circumvent it. Wit is the best safety valve modern man has evolved; the more civilization, the more repression, the more need there is for wit.".

One... gets an impression that civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means to power and coercion. It is, of course, natural to assume that these difficulties are not inherent in the nature of civilization itself but are determined by the imperfections of the cultural forms which have so far been developed.

The price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt.

Civilization has little to fear from educated people and brain-workers. In them the replacement of religious motives for civilized behaviors by other, secular motives, would proceed unobtrusively. . . .

Civilization runs a greater risk if we maintain our present attitude to religion than if we give it up.

Whatever fosters the growth of civilization works at the same time against war.

The inclination to aggression constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization.