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Psychology Quotes
"The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque."
6
"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."
6
"I only seem negative to the fortunate. That's because I show the less fortunate that they aren't less fortunate after all."
6
"Comparison is the thief of joy."
6
"Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage."
6
"Anxiety does not make a future situation turn out better if anything it stops you from reaching your highest potential. Relax and live in the present, not the future."
6
"The primary symptom of a controller is denial, that is I can't see its symptoms in myself."
6
"I know why she cried like that. She cried because she wasn't finished grieving the loss of me. When someone has an exaggerated emotional reaction to something in the present, it's usually because they haven't resolved something in their past."
6
"Fear motivates, more than love or ambition or joy. Fear is more powerful than anything else in the world. I have spent so long yearning for things-for love, for acceptance-that I do not really need. I need nothing except the submission that comes with fear. I do not know why it took me so long to learn this."
6
"The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel."
6
"Emotions or feelings stem from your attitude and they become the basis on which you decide or act. All decisions, choices and actions have some kind of underlying emotional influence. To change the way you feel about someone or something you must first change the way you think about them."
6
"Imagery is not past but present. It rests with what we call our mental processes to place these images in a temporal order."
6
"I would say about 80 to 90 percent of people's thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunction and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will know this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy."
6
"No neurotic harbors thoughts of suicide which are not murderous impulses against others redirected upon himself."
6
"Do not be disingenuous with me, Colonel Graff. Americans are quite apt at playing stupid when they choose to, but I am not to be deceived."
6
"I'm sorry, but I do hate this differentiation between the sexes. 'The modern girl has a thoroughly businesslike attitude to life' That sort of thing. It's not a bit true! Some girls are businesslike and some aren't. Some men are sentimental and muddle-headed, others are clear-headed and logical. There are just different types of brains."
6
"I snicker, but the idea is momentarily appealing. Part of me is scared of leaving school. Part of me wants to go desperately. Tension of opposites."
6
"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."
6
"Don't make fun of me!" Ender said. "I'm afraid I'm going crazy."
6
"Ingenuity was apparently given man in order that he may supply himself in crises with shapes and sounds with which to guard himself from truth."
6
"But memory is like plaster: peel it back and you just might find a completely different picture."
6
"Pride,' observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, 'is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary."
6
"The psychology of brutality was worse than the beatings."
6
"If you lose your mind when in a large group then use someone else's!"
6
"The human mind isn't a terribly logical or consistent place. Most people, given the choice to face a hideous or terrifying truth or to conveniently avoid it, choose the convenience and peace of normality. That doesn't make them strong or weak people, or good or bad people. It just makes them people."
6
"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."
6
"I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me."
6
"I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness."
6
"The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself."
6
"The sentences still form in my mind, and thoughts still do their little show-off dance, but I know my thought patterns so well now that they don't bother me anymore. My thoughts have become like old neighbors, kind of bothersome but ultimately rather endearing - Mr. and Mrs. Yakkity-Yak and their three dumb children, Blah, Blah and Blah. But they don't agitate my home. There's room for all of us in this neighborhood."
6
"Beliefs will nourish or poison depending on their compatibility with reality."
6
"Our monsters walk the dark pathways of secret motives..."
6
"An obstinate man does not hold opinions but they hold him."
6
"Tony knows the names of trees and birds. As we walk around, he points them out to me. I try to record them in my mind, but the information never holds. What matters to me is the emotional meaning of the objects."
6
"The more perfect a person is on the outside, the more demons they have on the inside."
6
"Death and genitals are things that frighten people, and when people are frightened, they develop means of concealment and aggression. It is common sense."
6
"Situations spin out of control because care was not taken to carefully manage reality through desires."
6
"Even extreme grief may ultimately ventitself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy."
6
"The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane."
6
"Strange how one person can saturate a room with vitality, with excitement. Then there are others, and this dame was one of them, who can drain off energy and joy, can suck pleasure dry and get no sustenance from it. Such people spread a grayness in the air about them."
6
"The greatest enemy to fear is truth."
5
"I obviously do everything to be "hard to understand" myself."
5
"People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on."
5
"At best, people are open to scrutinizing themselves and considering their blind spots; at worst, they become defensive and angry."
5
"Why Does Mirroring Work? Scientific research suggests 'mirroring' techniques works because of the mirror-neurons which are fired in our brains when we both perceive and take action. When we observe someone doing something, we may feel as if we are having the same experience."
5
"Boredom is a symptom of a conditioned and closed mind. If you are bored, you're doing yourself a tremendous disservice. Open your mind, break-free from your conditioned routine, and reignite the flames of excitement and discovery."
5
"Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity."
5
"Papa continually emphasizes how much remains unexplained. With the other psychoanalytic writers, everything is always so known and fixed."
5
"The general statement that the mental faculties are class concepts, belonging to descriptive psychology, relieves us of the necessity of discussing them and their significance at the present stage of our inquiry."
5
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