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Quotes by Psychologist
"So much is asked of parents, and so little is given."
60
"Man is gifted with reason; he is life being aware of itself; he has awareness of himself, of his fellow man, of his past, and of the possibilities of his future. This awareness of himself as a separate entity, the awareness of his own short life span, of the fact that without his will he is born and against his will he dies, that he will die before those whom he loves, or they before him, the awareness of his aloneness and separateness, of his helplessness before the forces of nature and of society, all this makes his separate, disunited existence an unbearable prison. He would become insane could he not liberate himself from this prison and reach out, unite himself in some form or other with men, with the world outside."
60
"The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge to conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation."
60
"Adolescence is a new birth, for the higher and more completely human traits are now born."
60
"I suspect the secret of personal attraction is locked up in our unique imperfections, flaws and frailties."
60
"Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency."
59
"When you are already in Detroit, you don't have to take a bus to get there."
59
"Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy."
59
"I try not to deal with people's hostility, though I must if they have something I need from them, as the professors did at Columbia or my landlord did."
59
"There is no coming to consciousness without pain."
59
"Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple."
59
"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction."
59
"To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable."
58
"It is the patriotic duty of every man to lie for his country."
58
"Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors."
58
"Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven."
57
"By not caring too much about what people think, I'm able to think for myself and propagate ideas which are very often unpopular. And I succeed."
57
"Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgment of others."
57
"I was free with every road as my home. No limitations and no commitments. But then summer passed and winter came and I fell short for safety. I fell for its spell, slowly humming me to sleep, because I was tired and small, too weak to take or handle those opinions and views, attacking me from every angle. Against my art, against my self, against my very way of living. I collected my thoughts, my few possessions and built isolated walls around my values and character. I protected my own definition of beauty and success like a treasure at the bottom of the sea, for no one saw what I saw, or felt the same as I did, and so I wanted to keep to myself. You hide to protect yourself."
57
"We... have created a greater material wealth than any other society in the history of the human race. Yet we have managed to kill off millions of our population in an arrangement which we call "war."
57
"What's done to children, they will do to society."
56
"In the different voice of women lies the truth of an ethic of care, the tie between relationship and responsibility, and the origins of aggression in the failure of connection."
56
"The facts are always friendly, every bit of evidence one can acquire, in any area, leads one that much closer to what is true."
56
"You can quiz me on Petrarch, Medea, Shakespeare or Dante, I know them all, and I'm sorry, but they've all gone wrong. Dumb glorified men, writing words about love and life as if they knew. As far as I'm concerned, they didn't make it out alive either, so I'm sure as hell not going to go to them for advice."
56
"The words which we use in our everyday speech are nothing other than watered-down magic."
56
"Physiology seeks to derive the processes in our own nervous system from general physical forces, without considering whether these processes are or are not accompanied by processes of consciousness."
56
"The more perfect a person is on the outside, the more demons they have on the inside."
56
"The concept of encounter also enables us to make clearer the important distinction between talent and creativity. Talent may well have its neurological correlates and can be studied as 'given to a person. A man or woman may have talent whether he or she uses it or not; talent can probably be measured in the person as such. But creativity can be seen only in the act. If we were purists, we would not speak of a 'creative person, but only of a creative act."
55
"In my early professionals years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?"
55
"Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations."
55
"Even as kids reach adolescence, they need more than ever for us to watch over them. Adolescence is not about letting go. It's about hanging on during a very bumpy ride."
55
"Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable."
55
"Actually, I can't imagine anything more tedious than a perfect person, especially if it was someone who also demanded perfection from me."
55
"As was to be expected, the discovery of the nervous apparatus of the salivary glands immediately impelled physiologists to seek a similar apparatus in other glands lying deeper in the digestive canal."
54
"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."
54
"So I am not a broken heart. I am not the weight I lost or miles or ran and I am not the way I slept on my doorstep under the bare sky in smell of tears and whiskey because my apartment was empty and if I were to be this empty I wanted something solid to sleep on. Like concrete. I am not this year and I am not your fault.I am muscles building cells, a little every day, because they broke that day,but bones are stronger once they heal and I am smiling to the bus driver and replacing my groceries once a week and I am not sitting for hours in the shower anymore. I am the way a life unfolds and bloom and seasons come and go and I am the way the spring always finds a way to turn even the coldest winter into a field of green and flowers and new life. I am not your fault."
54
"Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge."
54
"Modern man thinks he loses something - time - when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains, except kill it."
54
"When I look at the world I'm pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic."
54
"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become."
54
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