Theodor Reik Quotes & Sayings

The fear to love reaches sometimes the depth of a panic, resembles sometimes the fear to die. — Theodor Reik

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. — Theodor Reik

The small share of happiness attainable by man exists only insofar as he is able to cease to think of himself. — Theodor Reik

He who licks his wounds cannot be affectionate — Theodor Reik

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

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

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

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

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

There is need of variety in sex, but not in love. — Theodor Reik

No person loving or admiring himself is alone. — Theodor Reik

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

It was strange to find that love does not spring from abundance and richness of the ego, but is a way out of inner distress and poverty. We were surprised to discover that our first love is not directed either to another person or to ourselves, but to an imaginary ideal ego, to an image of ourselves as we would like to be. There are stranger discoveries awaiting us the more deeply we grope in the dark and the further we intrude into the secret places of the human heart. — Theodor Reik

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

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. — Theodor Reik

It is always possible to approach a goal by a detour. — Theodor Reik

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

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 — Theodor Reik

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

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

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

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

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