Jacques Lacan

"The subject is forever split between being and nothingness."

"What returns is never what was repressed."

"Love is a recognition of one's own lack in another."

"The analyst must be empty of all knowledge."

"Desire creates reality, not the reverse."

"The cure of psychoanalysis is the beginning of true sickness."

"One can only speak from a place of fundamental alienation."

"The symbolic order is merciless and inescapable."

"Psychoanalysis teaches that happiness is not the goal of life."

"The real cannot be symbolized; it can only be circled."

"Man is condemned to be free in his choices."

"Transference is the staging of the subject's desire."

"Truth emerges only in the gap between demand and desire."

"Psychoanalysis does not lead to happiness but to knowledge."

"The law is arbitrary; it is language."

"One becomes a subject by being subjected to language."

"The analysand's resistance is the analyst's best teacher."

"To be human is to be trapped in the symbolic order."

"Psychoanalysis is a science of the impossible."

"Death is the only certainty; all else is interpretation."

"The self is always a function of the Other."

"Language precedes consciousness."

"Psychoanalysis reveals that we are all essentially alone."

"The symbolic order is both necessary and imprisoning."

"One must accept the impossibility of ever fully knowing oneself."

"Desire is the human being's fundamental condition."

"Psychoanalysis teaches that there is no natural sexuality."

"The mirror stage structures the ego as an illusion."

"One must learn to live with the Real as impossible."

"Psychoanalysis is not about curing but about bearing witness."