psychology Quotes

“The final stage is come when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself.”

“...an effective psychotherapist or psychoanalyst is a “microsurgeon of the mind” who helps patients make needed alterations in neuronal networks.”

“My shadow calleth me? What matter about my shadow! Let it run after me! I—run away from it.”

“Healthy shame is the psychological foundation of humility. It is the source of spirituality.”

“Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.”

“Psychologists use words like codependent, symbiotic, or even fused to describe people who seem unable to be self-sufficient (...) with others. In contrast, Bowlby talked about ‘effective dependency’ and how being able, from ‘the cradle to the grave’, to turn to others for emotional support is a sign and a source of strength.”

“To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.”

“You don’t have any feeling for what makes a chump a chump. A real magician can make the marks open their mouths by picking a quarter out of the air. That levitation you do—I’ve never seen it done before, but the marks don’t warm to it. No psychology. Now take me, I can’t even pick a quarter out of the air. I got no act—except the one that counts. I know marks. I know what he hungers for, even if he don’t. That’s showmanship, son, whether you’re a politician, a preacher pounding a pulpit—or a magician. Find out what the chumps want and you can leave half your props in your trunk.”

“Ah! the strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. […] Science can never grapple with the irrational.”

I am not one to rely upon the expert procedure. It is the psychology I seek, not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash.

“It isn’t the American white man who is a racist, but it’s the American political, economic and social atmosphere that automatically nourishes a racist psychology in the white man.”

“You knew all along that your sanctioned world was only half the world and you tried to suppress the second half the way the priests and teachers do. You won’t succeed. No one succeeds in this once he has begun to think.”

“It is a simple law of human psychology that your thoughts will tend to revolve around what you value most.”

“One of the most neglected topics in the whole discipline of psychology, which prides itself in the definition of the science of human behaviour, is the psychology of money.”

“Archie disliked violence—most of his assignments were exercises in the psychological rather than the physical. That’s why he got away with so much. The Trinity brothers wanted peace at any price, quiet on the campus, no broken bones. Otherwise, the sky was the limit.”

“The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has a simple heuristic. Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference”

“Psychologist William James said that possibly the deepest human need is the need to feel appreciated.”

“I believe the same is true for most people who go into mental health. We are drawn to this profession because we are damaged - we study psychology to heal ourselves. Whether we are prepared to admit this or not is another question.”