He’s one of the most controversial scientists of the 20th century. Psychology students around the world affectionately refer to him as ’Grandfather Freud’. During his lifetime, some considered him a charlatan, others a genius. Coco Chanel dubbed him the first male feminist — for it was Freud in particular who became a theorist of the sexual revolution, which pushed women towards the idea of equal rights.

Two discoveries in particular have perhaps secured his reputation forever: he unravelled the mystery behind why we dream, and was the first person to come up with a universal theory for the workings of the subconscious human mind.

1. The scope of one’s personality is defined by the magnitude of that problem which is capable of driving a person out of his wits.
2. Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, make sure that you’re not surrounded by fools.
3. The task of making people happy did not form part of the plan of Creation.
4. Everything that you do in bed is perfectly and absolutely acceptable. If only both sides enjoyed it.
5. A complete absence of sex is the only thing which can be properly considered sexual deviance. Everything else is just a matter of taste.
6. At that moment when a person starts to seriously ponder the meaning and value of life, you can consider him a madman.
7. The first person to throw an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilisation.
8. Ideal, eternal love, purged of all hatred, exists only between the addict and his drug.
9. We live in a thoroughly strange time in which we are surprised to note that progress is marching in step with barbarism.
10. The more perfect a person is on the outside, the more demons they have on the inside.
11. When people criticise me, I know how to defend myself. But I’m powerless in the face of praise.
12. We are never so vulnerable as when we love, and never so hopelessly unhappy as when we lose the object of our love.
13. The first indication of stupidity is a complete lack of shame.
14. People are more moral than they think, and much more amoral than they imagine.
15. A large part of what is real within us is not comprehended; and that which is comprehended is not real.
16. Every normal person is, in fact, only normal in part.
17. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Source