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Sigmund Freud on Religion

1856–1939 Austria

← All quotes by Sigmund Freud

7 quotes

A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it.

Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego (1921)

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.

New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis (1933)

Cruelty and intolerance to those who do not belong to it are natural to every religion.

Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921)

Where the questions of religion are concerned people are guilty of every possible kind of insincerity and intellectual misdemeanor.

The Future of an Illusion (1927)

Immorality, no less than morality, has at all times found support in religion.

The Future of an Illusion (1927)

Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities.

New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis (1933)

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.

Civilization and its Discontents (1931)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Sigmund Freud (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.