BigTime academics pretend to quote even BiggerTime thinkers

Kevin Hoffman · 2025-07-07T02:24:15+00:00

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Both Robert Solomon and Irving Singer attribute the quote "love is lust plus the ordeal of civility" to Freud, but neither of them provides an actual source. I have looked and looked and strongly suspect this is a sentence/claim attributed to Freud that he never actually said/wrote. This happens a lot with famous thinkers. Can anyone help me out here?

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MJ. Smith

Treat it as a Freudian-style aphorism rather than a verified Freud quotation and cite Solomon or Singer 'cuz the actual source is a bear to discover.

Steven Veach

Hey Kevin,

At first glance, it would appear this quote came from John Updike from his novel "The Couples" (1968) and is not attributed to Freud. But, after further investigation, it is not found in this novel, but is only found in the discussions surrounding it. There is a book, "The Ordeal of Civility: Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss, and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity" by John Murray Cuddihy, but he does not use the entire quote in the book. There are only two links on the Google search results when searching as quoted, this forum, and a duplicate post on Reddit, which also cites Cuddihy's book.

So, I don't think it is a very popular quote in the first place, and second, I don't think it is citable. It is unclear where it first came from. I've found this kind of issue a few other times when tracking down the source of a quote. I hear from one commentator often that Socrates is credited with saying, “It may be that the deity can forgive sins, but I don’t see how!” Unfortunately, after some searching, I discovered there is no existing recording of this quote anywhere in Plato’s writings or any other ancient writings. It seemingly originated from H.A. Ironside in his Continual Burnt Offerings Devotional on the Sept 12 reading. He quotes Socrates as having said this statement, but provides no attribution. The quote is then read by others in Ironside and perpetuated without verifying the original source. This is one reason why academics are "supposed" to double-check all of their sources before publishing books or academic articles, and will usually utilize their graduate students to do so. But, it is not done in some instances, and incorrect citations can sometimes slip through.

I follow the adage: "Trust, but verify" when it comes to anything published or when said by any speaker (Acts 17:11).