But One Thing About Human Beings Puzzles

In The Theory Of Psycho-analysis We Have No Hesitation In Assuming That The Course Taken By Mental Events Is Automatically Regulated By The Pleasure Principle. We Believe, That Is To Say, That The Course Of Those Events Is Invariably Set In Motion By An Unpleasurable Tension, And That It Takes A Direction Such That Its Final Outcome Coincides With A Lowering Of That Tension That Is, With An Avoidance Of Unpleasure Or A Production Of Pleasure.

The Price We Pay For Our Advance In Civilization Is A Loss Of Happiness Through The Heightening Of The Sense Of Guilt.

Might We Not Say That Every Child At Play Behaves Like A Creative Writer, In That He Creates A World Of His Own, Or, Rather, Rearranges The Things Of His World In A New Way Which Pleases Him?

Everywhere I Go I Find That A Poet Has Been There Before Me.

The Whole Thing [religion] Is So Patently Infantile, So Foreign To Reality, That To Anyone With A Friendly Attitude To Humanity It Is Painful To Think That The Great Majority Of Mortals Will Never Be Able To Rise Above This View Of Life.