“The view is often defended that sciences should be built up on clear and sharply defined basal concepts. In actual fact no science, not even the most exact, begins with such definitions. The true beginning of scientific activity consists rather in describing phenomena and then in proceeding to group, classify and correlate them.”

“No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere.”

“We believe that it is possible for scientific work to gain some knowledge about the reality of the world, by means of which we can increase out power and in accordance with which we can arrange our life. If this belief is an illusion, then we are in the same position as you. But science has given us evidence by its numerous and important successes that it is no illusion.”

“Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to taking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young.”

“Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power.”

“According to the prevailing view human sexual life consists essentially in an endeavor to bring one's own genitals into contact with those of someone of the opposite sex.”

“Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind,because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.”