Theodor Reik Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

There are only two roads that lead to something like human happiness. They are marked by the words . . . love and achievement. . . . Inorder to be happy oneself it is necessary to make at least one other person happy. . . . The secret of human happiness is not inself-seeking but in self-forgetting.

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

No person loving or admiring himself is alone.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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