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Psychology Quotes
"Under peaceful conditions, the warlike man attacks himself."
191
"Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world."
104
"To be a human being means to possess a feeling of inferiority which constantly presses towards its own conquest. The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge for conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation."
90
"Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage."
86
"The unconscious is not a demoniacal monster, but a natural entity which, as far as moral sense, aesthetic taste, and intellectual judgement go, is completely neutral. It only becomes dangerous when our conscious attitude to it is hopelessly wrong. To the degree that we repress it, its danger increases. But the moment the patient begins to assimilate contents that were previously unconscious, its danger diminishes. The dissociation of personality, the anxious division of the day-time and the night-time sides of the psyche, cease with progressive assimilation."
73
"We are sometimes astounded by the behavior of emotional outlaws, as they act in line with their own standards, but proceed like bulls-in-a-china-shop, create one heck of a mess in their living environment and bring about shocking disturbing dissensions, ever since their inner construction clashes with our emotional architecture. ['Disruption']"
72
"Materialism is an identity crisis."
65
"To have them putting him on, trying him on, trying him out while he himself puts them on like a sock over a foot onto the stub of himself-his extra sensitive thumb, his tentacle, his delicate, stalked slug's eye which extrudes, expands, winces and shrivels back into himself when touched wrongly, grows big again. Bulging a little at the tip, traveling forward as if along a leaf into them, avid for vision. To achieve vision in this way; this journey into a darkness that is composed of women-a woman-who can see in darkness while he himself strains blindly forward."
64
"She gave me another of those long keen looks, and I could see that she was again asking herself if her favourite nephew wasn't steeped to the tonsils in the juice of the grape."
64
"One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but only when one esteems equal or superior."
58
"But of the seven deadly sins, wrath is the healthiest - next only to lust."
57
"Your belief about others creates an unconscious behavior pattern in you which creates the reality!"
55
"Fat realized that one of two possibilities existed and only two; either Dr. Stone was totally insane " not just insane but totally so " or else in an artful, professional fashion he had gotten Fat to talk; he had drawn Fat out and now knew that Fat was totally insane."
55
"Sons of suicides seldom do well. Characteristically, they find life lacking a certain zing. They tend to feel more rootless than most, even in a notoriously rootless nation. They are squeamishly incurious about the past and numbly certain about the future to this grisly extent: they suspect that they, too, will kill themselves."
53
"Habit is the enormous flywheel of society its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding or regretting of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all."
52
"It is easy-terribly easy-to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to to break a man's spirit is Devil's work."
52
"The psychotherapist learns little or nothing from his successes. They mainly confirm him in his mistakes while his failures on the other hand are priceless experiences in that they not only open up the way to a deeper truth but force him to change his views and methods."
50
"Generally speaking, punishment makes men hard and cold; it concentrates; it sharpens the feeling of alienation; it strengthens the power of resistance."
48
"Men are like rivers: the water is the same in each, and alike in all; but every river is narrow here, is more rapid there, here slower, there broader, now clear, now cold, now dull, now warm. It is the same with men. Every man carries in himself the germs of every human quality, and sometimes one manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often becomes unlike himself, while still remaining the same man."
47
"People think that those who commit suicide are against life-they are not. They are too lusty for life, they have great lust for life; and because life is not fulfilling their lust, in anger, in despair, they destroy themselves."
47
"I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind, but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature."
47
"When you use positive words it naturally has a very dynamic effect on the energy present around you."
47
"The exaggerated dopamine sensitivity of the introvert leads one to believe that when in public, introverts, regardless of its validity, often feel to be the center of (unwanted) attention hence rarely craving attention. Extroverts, on the other hand, seem to never get enough attention. So on the flip side it seems as though the introvert is in a sense very external and the extrovert is in a sense very internal - the introvert constantly feels too much 'outerness' while the extrovert doesn't feel enough 'outerness'."
46
"As a child, I was afraid of the dark and the monsters on the outside.As a man, I run away from the light, afraid to show the monsters within."
46
"The more perfect a person is on the outside, the more demons they have on the inside."
46
"Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves."
46
"My assumption is that fundamentally the picture of the human animal, as developed by Freud, is largely right."
45
"If we suspect that a man is lying, we should pretend to believe him; for then he becomes bold and assured, lies more vigorously, and is unmasked."
45
"An ignorant man who is regarded as knowledgeable by people who are more ignorant than him is still ignorant."
45
"When people's parallel truth collides with their real truth, they may have a hard time in subduing all the fanciful items and characters of their invented world. ['The day the mirror was talking back']"
44
"He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore."
43
"Justification of failure is the most powerful mechanism adopted by the mind to avoid the reflection of Self Failure."
43
"People with higher ratios of positive to negative emotions are more likely to flourish in life."
42
"Sometimes it's better to show our vulnerability / pain / regrets so others don't think us impervious / unapproachable - be real / open."
42
"Pride helps us, and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts-not to hurt others."
42
"I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane."
41
"A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you are keeping."
40
"Ego-generated emotions are derived from the mind's identification with external factors which are, of course, all unstable and liable to change at any moment."
40
"It is very unnerving to be proven wrong, particularly when you are really right and the person who is really wrong is proving you wrong and proving himself, wrongly, right."
40
"I can't think of anyone who is up on evolutionary psychology and related areas who is deluded enough to be called a utopian."
40
"Probably more than any concrete vice or failing Amory despised his own personality - he loathed knowing that to-morrow and the thousand days after he would sell pompously at a compliment and sulk at an ill word like a third-rate musician or a first-class actor."
40
"If we let the drama of others' lives become our own, then we are no longer ourselves."
40
"Sometimes I stare into a pool of piss, I see my reflection, I picture a hole in my face, there's nothing there, it's vanished. I watch the maggots turn to flies, and they fly off with bits of flesh from my body. I attempt to wipe it clear from my mind, but the nice thoughts get swallowed up. I can't think nice for too long-it would destroy me."
40
"Instead of letting our emotions run amok, we can use our minds as tools to build or create realities that serve us better."
39
"If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man."
39
"Mirthfulness is in the mind and you cannot get it out. It is just as good in its place as conscience or veneration."
39
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."
39
"The premise is: everybody's like me and we all think alike.The corollary is: people who don't think like me don't matter."
39
"But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that the diameter of a circle is the same thing as its semi-circumference, because, forsooth, they terminate in the same two points."
39
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