Top 1169 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Psychologists - Page 3

There is no certainty; there is only adventure.

The act of writing bears something in common with the act of love. The writer, at his most productive moments, just flows. He gives of that which is uniquely himself. He makes himself naked, recording his nakedness in the written word. Herein lies some of the terror which frequently freezes a writer, preventing him from producing. Herein, too, lies some of the courage that must be entailed in letting others learn how one has experienced or is experiencing the world.

If the truth contradicts deeply held beliefs, that is too bad.

Just because someone thinks they remember something in detail, with confidence and with emotion, does not mean that it actually happened, .. False memories have these characteristics too.

Could we look into the head of a Chess player, we should see there a whole world of feelings, images, ideas, emotion and passion

The onset of mania occurs when repression is no longer able to resist the assaults of the repressed instincts.

Years of research in psychology has shown that rewards and punishments can be very effective in changing behavior. But, at the same time, they can create an addiction to rewards and punishments.

Fervid atheism is usually a screen for repressed religion.

The greatest surprise of human evolution may be that the highest form of selfishness is selflessness.

The formula for a happy marriage is five positive remarks, or interactions, for every one negative.

Often, in great discovery the most important thing is that a certain question is found.

Genes and family may determine the foundation of the house, but time and place determine its form.

What leaders have in common is that each really knows their strengths, has developed their strengths, and can call on the right strength at the right time.

One of the many interesting and surprising experiences of the beginner in child analysis is to find in even very young children a capacity for insight which is often far greater than that of adults.

It's not how many hours you put in with a client or on a project. It's the quantity and quality of your energy - your focus and force - that determine whether that time is valuable.

The abstract analysis of the world by mathematics and physics rests on the concepts of space and time.

After all, the ultimate goal of all research is not objectivity, but truth.

The ignorant man always adores what he cannot understand.

Once you realize that will power is just a matter of learning how to control your attention and thoughts, you can really begin to increase it.

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select--doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.

As the number of studies increased, it became clear that writing was a far more powerful tool for healing than anyone had ever imagined.

In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face. That is a rather startling thing to say, but it is our conclusion.

The new meaning of soul is creativity and mysticism. These will become the foundation of the new psychological type and with him or her will come the new civilization.

I think self-discipline is something, it's like a muscle. The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.

Addiction is more malleable than you know. When people come to me for therapy, they often ask me whether their behavior constitutes a real addiction (or whether they are really alcoholic, etc.). My answer is that this is not the important question. The important questions are how many problems is the involvement causing you, how much do you want to change it, and how can we go about change?

Discovered check is the dive bomber of the Chessboard

Do your own thing on your own terms and get what you came here for.

Mistrust is the fuel for so much mental pain, so many mental disorders. I am not talking here about the suspicions we sometimes have of one another, the distant but lurking sense that perhaps our lover lies to us, our best friend whispers behind our back. I am talking about a belief that betrayal inundates the atoms of the universe, is so woven into the workings of the world that every step is treacherous, and that below the rich mud lies a mine.

True motivation comes from achievement, personal development, job satisfaction, and recognition.

When I see a colour or hear a sound, I am aware of something, and not of nothing.

As my awareness increases, my control over my own being increases.

I see people with Asperger's syndrome as a bright thread in the rich tapestry of life.

Shamans can be defined as socially sanctioned practitioners who purport to voluntarily regulate their attention and awareness so as to access information not ordinarily available, using it to facilitate appropriate behavior and healthy development - as well as to alleviate stress and sickness - among members of their community and/or for the community as a whole.

It is not change that causes anxiety; it is the feeling that we are without defenses in the presence of what we see as danger that causes anxiety.

Depression is a prison where you are both the suffering prisoner and the cruel jailer.

The whole world is an art gallery when you're mindful. There are beautiful things everywhere and they're free.

There are no individuals in the world only fragments of families

When the family has been brought into its natural order, the individual can leave it behind him while still feeling the strength of his family supporting him. Only when the connection to his family is acknowledged, and the person's responsibility seen clearly and then distributed, can the individual feel unburdened and go about his personal affairs without anything from the past weighing him down or holding him back.

You shall always find what you created in your mind, for instance, a benevolent God or an evil Devil. Between them are countless facets. Therefore, concentrate on the depth of your consciousness and on what you consider to be positive and good.

Many people think that discipline is the essence of parenting. But that isn't parenting. Parenting is not telling your child what to do when he or she misbehaves. Parenting is providing the conditions in which a child can realize his or her full human potential.

The pursuit of natural knowledge, the investigation of the world - mental and material - in which we live, is not a dull and spiritless affair: rather is it a voyage of adventure of the human mind, a holiday for reckless and imaginative souls.

Some women think they need to be overpowering in order to be powerful. This is so far from the truth. What is so great about being a women is how powerful we are quite naturally.

But psychology is a more tricky field, in which even outstanding authorities have been known to run in circles, 'describing things which everyone knows in language which no one understands'.

The goal of recovery is not to become normal. The goal is to embrace the human vocation of becoming more deeply, more fully human.

In order to know how to talk, you have to know what to say. In order to know what to say, you have to get in touch with those deep-inside-of-you thoughts, feelings, needs, and yearnings. These are the parts of you that must be communicated if you are going to be known.

When you share your moral common sense with people in your locality, that helps you to form a community. But those gut reactions differ between groups, making it harder to get along with other groups.

The propensity to make strong emotional bonds to particular individuals [is] a basic component of human nature

Education must be increasingly concerned about the fullest development of all children and youth, and it will be the responsibility of the schools to seek learning conditions which will enable each individual to reach the highest level of learning possible.

We mute the realization of malevolence- which is too threatening to bear - by turning offenders into victims themselves and by describing their behavior as the result of forces beyond their control.

A mind cannot be independent of culture.

The simplest definition of advertising, and one that will probably meet the test of critical examination, is that advertising is selling in print.

An adolescent does not rebel against her parents. She rebels against their power. If parents would rely less on power and more on nonpower methods to influence their children from infancy on, there would be little for children to rebel against when they become adolescents. The use of power to change the behavior of children, then, has this severe limitation: parents inevitably run out of power, and sooner than they think.

The good life is best construed as a matrix that includes happiness, occasional sadness, a sense of purpose, playfulness, and psychological flexibility, as well autonomy, mastery, and belonging.

The best ideas aren't hidden in shadowy recesses. They're right in front of us, hidden in plain sight. Innovation seldom depends on discovering obscure or subtle elements but in seeing the obvious with fresh eyes. This is easier said than done because nothing is as hard to see as what's right before our eyes. We overlook what we take for granted. Billions of tea drinkers observed the force of steam escaping from water boiling in a kettle before James Watt realized that this vapor could be converted into energy.

Getting cancer can become the beginning of living. The search for one's own being, the discovery of the life one needs to live, can be one of the strongest weapons against disease.

Growth takes place in a person by working at a deep inner level in a sustained atmosphere of silence.

Creativity is the process of sensing problems or gaps in information, then identifying the difficulties and seeking solutions through trial and error or through forming hypotheses.

That reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct.

Well it's a drastic procedure by your standards and mine, but for the people who are living in desperation perhaps the best way to understand it is that it seems no more drastic to them than circumcision.

Psychology is a very unsatisfactory science.