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Top 20 Peter Gay Quotes (2025 Update)

Peter Gay Quote: “Every historian has informally an anthropology, without ever using the word.”

1. “Every historian has informally an anthropology, without ever using the word.”

Peter Gay Quote: “Since God is silent, man is his own master; he must live in a disenchanted world, submit everything to criticism, and make his own way.”

2. “Since God is silent, man is his own master; he must live in a disenchanted world, submit everything to criticism, and make his own way.”

Peter Gay Quote: “Excellence was the best revenge.”

3. “Excellence was the best revenge.”

Peter Gay Quote: “People seem to forget that one reason they are now thinking differently is Freud’s legacy itself.”

4. “People seem to forget that one reason they are now thinking differently is Freud’s legacy itself.”

Peter Gay Quote: “My assumption is that fundamentally the picture of the human animal, as developed by Freud, is largely right.”

5. “My assumption is that fundamentally the picture of the human animal, as developed by Freud, is largely right.”

Peter Gay Quote: “I decided that what I really wanted to do was to make my writing in history deeper, if that’s the right word to use. And that is what I did.”

6. “I decided that what I really wanted to do was to make my writing in history deeper, if that’s the right word to use. And that is what I did.”

Peter Gay Quote: “Freud never questioned the powerful participation of objective realities in the very constitution of human experience. Love, as he put it late in life, seeks objects. So does hatred. And those objects are external, not internal, agents of experience.”

7. “Freud never questioned the powerful participation of objective realities in the very constitution of human experience. Love, as he put it late in life, seeks objects. So does hatred. And those objects are external, not internal, agents of experience.”

Peter Gay Quote: “My definition of modernism took a while to develop.”

8. “My definition of modernism took a while to develop.”

Peter Gay Quote: “Hysteria defied self-control; obsessional neurosis mimicked it.”

9. “Hysteria defied self-control; obsessional neurosis mimicked it.”

Peter Gay Quote: “What interests me, and has always interested me, has been modernism.”

10. “What interests me, and has always interested me, has been modernism.”

Peter Gay Quote: “The true hypocrite knows what he is doing, and does it to his own advantage. The unconscious hypocrite is simply man in civilization.”

11. “The true hypocrite knows what he is doing, and does it to his own advantage. The unconscious hypocrite is simply man in civilization.”

Peter Gay Quote: “There is something very intriguing about, for example, the sense of accomplishment that a small child has, which you might be able to reduce to aggression and libido, but which might also have some independent existence.”

12. “There is something very intriguing about, for example, the sense of accomplishment that a small child has, which you might be able to reduce to aggression and libido, but which might also have some independent existence.”

Peter Gay Quote: “Sheer stupidity – that much underrated force in history.”

13. “Sheer stupidity – that much underrated force in history.”

Peter Gay Quote: “The austere empiricism and scholarly imagination of the Warburg style were the very antithesis of the brutal anti-intellectualism and vulgar mysticism threatening to barbarize German culture in the 1920s; this was Weimar at its best.”

14. “The austere empiricism and scholarly imagination of the Warburg style were the very antithesis of the brutal anti-intellectualism and vulgar mysticism threatening to barbarize German culture in the 1920s; this was Weimar at its best.”

Peter Gay Quote: “I have always had a strong interest in history and finding out about the past can be remarkably helpful with working out the future, too.”

15. “I have always had a strong interest in history and finding out about the past can be remarkably helpful with working out the future, too.”

Peter Gay Quote: “The truth is that the angels of anxiety – those overpowering forces for change in politics, economics, science, morals, and social policy – were at the same time agents for self-confidence.”

16. “The truth is that the angels of anxiety – those overpowering forces for change in politics, economics, science, morals, and social policy – were at the same time agents for self-confidence.”

Peter Gay Quote: “To have a liberal temperament is a kind of psychological boon, To be able to understand that someone you disagree with is not just a terrible creature but somebody with whom you disagree.”

17. “To have a liberal temperament is a kind of psychological boon, To be able to understand that someone you disagree with is not just a terrible creature but somebody with whom you disagree.”

Peter Gay Quote: “Democratic politics was many things, among them a kind of seduction, documenting once again the interplay of aggression with libido. It awakened and often gratified the electorate’s hostile impulses, or at the very least, its desire for aggressive self-assertion. At the same time, it yoked followers to their leaders to produce a community rife with erotic overtones. Love for one’s favorite politician was intensified by hatred for the opposition.”

18. “Democratic politics was many things, among them a kind of seduction, documenting once again the interplay of aggression with libido. It awakened and often gratified the electorate’s hostile impulses, or at the very least, its desire for aggressive self-assertion. At the same time, it yoked followers to their leaders to produce a community rife with erotic overtones. Love for one’s favorite politician was intensified by hatred for the opposition.”

Peter Gay Quote: “The ideas of theologians are refuted by their adversaries, the ideas of scientists are refuted by their followers.”

19. “The ideas of theologians are refuted by their adversaries, the ideas of scientists are refuted by their followers.”

Peter Gay Quote: “The unmeasured hopes and fears of middle-class sufferers were often a none-too-subtle kind of transference. They invested the physician with all the attributes of a caring, all-knowing father, almost a manufactured deity, only to be disappointed over and over again. With them, expectations of the physician’s omnipotence alternated with contempt for his impotence, and they irrationally idolized or irrationally execrated him.”

20. “The unmeasured hopes and fears of middle-class sufferers were often a none-too-subtle kind of transference. They invested the physician with all the attributes of a caring, all-knowing father, almost a manufactured deity, only to be disappointed over and over again. With them, expectations of the physician’s omnipotence alternated with contempt for his impotence, and they irrationally idolized or irrationally execrated him.”

Peter Gay Quote: “With the passage of years, not all of Dicken’s readers remained infatuated with his pathos. One generation’s sublimity became another generation’s kitsch.”

21. “With the passage of years, not all of Dicken’s readers remained infatuated with his pathos. One generation’s sublimity became another generation’s kitsch.”

Peter Gay Quote: “And my interest in history was, and remains, very strong: what I wanted was to understand certain things better by understanding them psychoanalytically.”

22. “And my interest in history was, and remains, very strong: what I wanted was to understand certain things better by understanding them psychoanalytically.”

Peter Gay Quote: “The human mind hungers for reality; except for the largely encapsulated id, which is the depository of the raw drives and of deeply repressed material, the other institutions of the mind, the ego and the superego, draw continuously and liberally on the culture in which they subsist, develop, succeed, and fail. While the mind presents the world with its needs, the world gives the mind its grammar, wishes their vocabulary, anxieties their object.”

23. “The human mind hungers for reality; except for the largely encapsulated id, which is the depository of the raw drives and of deeply repressed material, the other institutions of the mind, the ego and the superego, draw continuously and liberally on the culture in which they subsist, develop, succeed, and fail. While the mind presents the world with its needs, the world gives the mind its grammar, wishes their vocabulary, anxieties their object.”

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