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Quotation from Reflections on War and Death by Sigmund Freud
“The first and most important prohibition of the awakening conscience declared: Thou shalt not kill”
Reflections on War and Death, Part II, 'Our Attitude Towards Death', trans. A. A. Brill and Alfred B. Kuttner (1918)
Freud derives the commandment from guilt mixed with grief at the corpse of a loved one, then argues that so strong a prohibition implies a correspondingly strong wish to kill.
Citation: "The first and most important prohibition of the awakening conscience declared: Thou shalt not kill" — Sigmund Freud, Reflections on War and Death, Part II, 'Our Attitude Towards Death', trans. A. A. Brill and Alfred B. Kuttner (1918). (id freud-reflections-on-war-and-death-q7)
