Top 1169 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Psychologists

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'

You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing. You don't have to do anything to earn it. Your shortcomings, your lack of self-esteem, physical perfection, or social and economic success - none of that matters. No one can take this love away from you, and it will always be here.

Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing. Instead of offering empathy, we often have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling. Empathy, however, calls upon us to empty our mind and listen to others with our whole being.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.

It's a wonderful thing to be optimistic. It keeps you healthy and it keeps you resilient.

My prayer became 'May I find peace... May I love this life no matter what.' I was seeking an inner refuge, an experience of presence and wholeness that could carry me through whatever losses might come.

Goals transform a random walk into a chase.

Share our similarities, celebrate our differences.

It is impossible to see the angel unless you first have a notion of it.

If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.

The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.

Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.

Sometimes you make the right decision, sometimes you make the decision right.

Confidentiality is an ancient and well-warranted social value.

A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.

The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation - a force for construction and destruction.

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.

In order to succeed, people need a sense of self-efficacy, to struggle together with resilience to meet the inevitable obstacles and inequities of life.

Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.

The art of love is largely the art of persistence.

Everything has seasons, and we have to be able to recognize when something's time has passed and be able to move into the next season. Everything that is alive requires pruning as well, which is a great metaphor for endings.

There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.

Humans are social beings, and we are happier, and better, when connected to others.

Well-being cannot exist just in your own head. Well-being is a combination of feeling good as well as actually having meaning, good relationships and accomplishment.

Being alone with fear can rapidly turn into panic. Being alone with frustration can rapidly turn into anger. Being alone with disappointment can rapid turn into discouragement and, even worse, despair.

Don't marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can't live without.

Don't compare yourself with other people; compare yourself with who you were yesterday.

We say that children are bad at paying attention, but we really mean that they're bad at not paying attention - they easily get distracted by anything interesting.

The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.

The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create men who are capable of doing new things.

I do not like to work with patients who are in love. Perhaps it is because of envy - I, too, crave enchantment. Perhaps it is because love and psychotherapy are fundamentally incompatible. The good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mystery and crumbles upon inspection.

The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.

Remove those 'I want you to like me' stickers from your forehead and, instead, place them where they truly will do the most good -on your mirror!

The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces.

Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn.

A strong, positive self-image is the best possible preparation for success.

Love, work, and knowledge are the wellsprings of our lives, they should also govern it.

For the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white.

Fathering makes a man, whatever his standing in the eyes of the world, feel strong and good and important, just as he makes his child feel loved and valued.

A radical inner transformation and rise to a new level of consciousness might be the only real hope we have in the current global crisis brought on by the dominance of the Western mechanistic paradigm.

Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.

You can be right or you can be happy.

The secret of happiness is variety, but the secret of variety, like the secret of all spices, is knowing when to use it.

If you want to change attitudes, start with a change in behavior.

We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.

Empathy is a necessary step for truth and reconciliation.

Often confused with shyness, introversion does not imply social reticence or discomfort. Rather than being averse to social engagement, introverts become overwhelmed by too much of it, which explains why the introvert is ready to leave a party after an hour and the extravert gains steam as the night goes on.

In A.I., the holy grail was how do you generate internal representations.

There is in every child at every stage a new miracle of vigorous unfolding, which constitutes a new hope and a new responsibility for all.

My grandfather didn't have any patience for little kids or their needs.

I am sure that if the devil existed, he would want us to feel very sorry for him.

Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life's work.

Adolescence is when girls experience social pressure to put aside their authentic selves and to display only a small portion of their gifts.

There would be no need for love if perfection were possible. Love arises from our imperfection, from our being different and always in need of the forgiveness, encouragement and that missing half of ourselves that we are searching for, as the Greek myth tells us, in order to complete ourselves.

Trust is the conduit for influence; it's the medium through which ideas travel.