Top 1169 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Psychologists - Page 18

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.

Psychopaths are social predators, and like all predators, they are looking for feeding grounds. Wherever you get power, prestige and money, you will find them.

Successfully functioning in a society with diverse values, traditions and lifestyles requires us to have a relationship to our own reactions rather than be captive of them. To resist our tendencies to make right or true, that which is nearly familiar, and wrong or false, that which is only strange.

Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.

Inner peace can be reached only when we practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past, and is therefore the means for correcting our misperceptions.

I was born in Bournemouth, England, in 1943.

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.

Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.

I'd rather have a Pawn than a finger

There are wholes, the behavior of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. It is the hope of Gestalt theory to determine the nature of such wholes.

Even the very youngest children already are perfectly able to discriminate between the imaginary and the real, whether in books or movies or in their own pretend play. Children with the most elaborate and beloved imaginary friends will gently remind overenthusiastic adults that these companions are, after all, just pretend.

In real life, as well as in experiments, people can come to believe things that never really happened.

We have to shift our understanding of ourselves as separate individuals, each seeking our own welfare, to an understanding of how we fit into social, biological, and physical environments.

It seems reasonable to envision, for a time 10 or 15 years hence, a "thinking center" that will incorporate the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and ... a network of such centers, connected to one another by wide-band communication lines and to individual users by leased-wire services.

It makes it very exciting don't you think to live in an age of, of discovery of human personality this way?

He who is reluctant to recognize me opposes me.

It's so much easier to tell people what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear.

Joy comes from using your potential.

I can have peace of mind only when I forgive rather than judge.

At Yale we don’t just want to make new things, we want to make things better.

From this point of view, to avoid your strengths and to focus on your weaknesses isn't a sign of diligent humility. It is almost irresponsible. By contrast the most responsible, the most challenging, and, in the sense of being true to yourself, the most honorable thing to do is face up to the strength potential inherent in your talents and then find ways to realize it.

When we remember something, we're taking bits and pieces of experience - sometimes from different times and places - and bringing it all together to construct what might feel like a recollection but is actually a construction. The process of calling it into conscious awareness can change it, and now you're storing something that's different. We all do this, for example, by inadvertently adopting a story we've heard.

The Mirror Stage as formative in the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience.

Recovery is about purpose and meaning in life, not “sobriety” and meetings.

If you persuade yourself that you can do a certain thing, provided this thing be possible, you will do it, however difficult it may be. If, on the contrary, you imagine that you cannot do the simplest thing in the world, it is impossible for you to do it, and molehills become for you unscalable mountains.

It is interesting to note that in every phase of life feminine masochism finds some form of expression.

For a small child there is no division between playing and learning; between the things he or she does 'just for fun' and things that are 'educational.' The child learns while living and any part of living that is enjoyable is also play.

My own being can be judged by the depths I reach in making these historical origins my own.

What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn if provided with appropriate prior and current conditions of learning.

Since functional brain imaging first emerged, we have learned that there aren't very many brain regions uniquely responsible for specific tasks; most complex tasks engage many if not all of the brain's major networks. So it is fairly hard to make general psychological inferences just from brain data.

There's no such thing as multitasking.

You can't change when you're defensive.

The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today.

Frederick Herzberg, asserts that the powerful motivator in our lives isn't money; it's the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements.

Wise elders will likely be those individuals who stay both mentally and physically vital throughout life.

What happens when good people are put into an evil place? Do they triumph or does the situation dominate their past history and morality?

In play, the child is always behaving beyond his age, above his usual everyday behaviour; in play he is, as it were, a head above himself. Play contains in a concentrated form, as in the focus of a magnifying glass, all developmental tendencies; it is as if the child tries to jump above his usual level.

Cooperate on move one; thereafter, do whatever the other player did the previous move.

Symptoms, those you believe you recognize, seem to you irrational because you take them in an isolated manner, and you want to interpret them directly.

Of all our basic virtues, courage is the one that helps us to live exactly the way we want and provides the psychological fuel we need to create, take risks, help others, and face hard times... Courageous action is humanity at its finest.

A plan is made for a few moves only, not for the whole game.

Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.

The human psyche shows that each individual is an extension of all of existence.

Things you create with your mind are always part of your postmortal life, whether they seem real or not.

Your presence is the most precious gift you can give to another human being.

How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.

If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying. But no man can tell another what this purpose is. Each must find out for himself, and must accept the responsibility that his answer prescribes. If he succeeds he will continue to grow in spite of all indignities.

People's beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed property; there is huge variablitiy in how you perform.

Superstitions, and especially the early cultivation of religion, with its "fear of the Lord" and of unknown mysterious agencies, are especially potent in the development of the instinct of fear. Even the early cultivation of morality and conscientiousness, with their fears of right and wrong, often causes psychoneurotic states in later life. Religious, social, and moral taboos and superstitions, associated with apprehension of threatening impending evil, based on the fear instinct, form the germs of psychopathic affections.

Discipline is wisdom and vice versa.

The fundamental difficulty in myothermic observations is the smallness of the changes involved and their rapidity.

When there is a conflict, which group's sense of right and wrong should prevail? If a morality is a system that allows individuals to form a group and to get along with each other, then the challenge is to devise a system that allows different groups to get along - what I call a meta-morality.

Examples of exaggeration can be found in almost any advertising medium. The use of the superlative is altogether too prevalent. 'The finest,' 'the best,' 'the greatest,' 'the purest,' 'the most economical,' and so on ad infinitum, are hurled at the public everywhere. Surely not all products of the same class can be the best or the finest.

And I thought about the psychic numbing involved in strategic projections of using hydrogen bombs or nuclear weapons of any kind. And I also thought about ways in which all of us undergo what could be called the numbing of everyday life.

The ultimate solutions to problems are rational; the process of finding them is not.

Remember, you cannot be responsible for the happiness of other people. You can do your best to be sensitive to the needs and desires of others, but some people will not be happy no matter how much you do for them. If you decided you were responsible for their happiness, you could drive yourself completely up the nearest wall.

I came up with idea of a solar airplane flying around the world with no fuel - that would be a beautiful message in terms of technology, the energy of the future and the environment.

Whatever you do to your child's body, you are doing to your child's mind too.

Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better

While studying the effects of accumulated stress on the nervous system, I began to suspect that most organisms have an innate capacity to rebound from threatening and stressful events.