Psychology Quotes

Baseless victimhood is usually the last stage before outright aggression.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Sanity is not about confrontation. It's about filtering. Having a stable and happy life is about saying no to crazy people, not about inviting them in and then hoping that confrontations are going to make them sane.

~ Stefan Molyneux

To be yourself is in many ways to be inconvenient to others. Only placaters and appeasers get along with other people all the time and that's not really getting along with anyone. That's just self erasure.

~ Stefan Molyneux

The three most important words in a relationship are not, 'I love you,' but, 'Tell me more.

~ Stefan Molyneux

If you spend time with crazy and dangerous people, remember – their personalities are socially transmitted diseases; like water poured into a container, most of us eventually turn into – or remain – whoever we surround ourselves with. We can choose our tribe, but we cannot change that our tribe is our destiny.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Deep connection is the antidote to madness.

~ Stefan Molyneux

God judges men from the inside out; men judge men from the outside in. Perhaps to God, an extreme mental patient is doing quite well in going a month without murder, for he fought his chemical imbalance and succeeded; oppositely, perhaps the healthy, able and stable man who has never murdered in his life yet went a lifetime consciously, willingly never loving anyone but himself may then be subject to harsher judgment than the extreme mental patient. It might be so that God will stand for the weak and question the strong.

~ Criss Jami

In my opinion, our health care system has failed when a doctor fails to treat an illness that is treatable.

~ Kevin Alan Lee

When the writing is good, a book becomes a mirror. The reader will see an uncanny familiarity and respond accordingly.

~ Jen Knox

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.

~ James P. Carse

Whether a belief is considered to be a delusion or not depends partly upon the intensity with which it is defended, and partly upon the numbers of people subscribing to it.

~ Anthony Storr

I refuse to let the standards of evil people chip away at my capacity for integrity.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Those who make conversations impossible, make escalation inevitable.

~ Stefan Molyneux

În clipa când ți se impune să nu te gândești la un lucru, te vei gândi doar la el, obsesiv. Interdicția devine obligație.

~ Jean-Claude Carrière

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly. The fundamental conceptions of psychology are practically very clear to us, but theoretically they are very confused, and one easily makes the obscurest assumptions in this science without realizing, until challenged, what internal difficulties they involve.

~ William James

What is humor?' one of their professors had posed, and he had answered, ''nondangerous, unexpectedly inappropriate juxtaposition.

~ Sena Jeter Naslund

When the mind is free, magic happens.

~ C.g. Rousing

There is something almost shocking in the notion of so chaste a function carrying this Kantian hurlyburly in her womb.

~ William James

The development of man's intellectual capacities has far outstripped the development of his emotions. Man's brain lives in the twentieth century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age. The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself.

~ Erich Fromm

The freedom of an unscheduled afternoon brought confusion rather than joy. Julius had always been focused. When he was not seeing patients, other important projects and activities-writing, teaching, tennis, research-clamored for his attention. But today nothing seemed important. He suspected that nothing had ever been important, that his mind had arbitrarily imbued projects with importance and then cunningly covered its traces. Today he saw through the ruse of a lifetime. Today there was nothing important to do, and he ambled aimlessly down Union Street.

~ Irvin D. Yalom

To be incapable of taking one’s enemies, one’s accidents, even one’s misdeeds seriously for very long - that is the sign of strong full natures in whom there is an excess of power to form, to mold, to recuperate and to forget. Mirabeau had no memory for insults and vile actions done to him and was unable to forgive simply because he - forgot. Such a man shakes off with a single shrug the many vermin that eat deep into others.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

‎...θα πρέπει να αντιληφθείς, αγαπητή Τερέζα, ότι τα αντικείμενα δεν έχουν, κατά την άποψη μας, άλλη αξία από εκείνη που τους δίνει η φαντασία μας

~ Marquis De Sade

We attribute to ourselves qualities that we do not possess because if we possessed them, our lives would exactly mirror our image of ourselves. Our lies about what is really happening in our lives are what we use to patch up our ego with rationalizations and justifications, all of which conceal from us the fact that we cannot really do anything because we have no Being.

~ Laura Knight Jadczyk

The cynic sees only cynicism, the depressive can taint creation with one glance

~ Anna Funder

How do we account for this paradox that the absence of Law universalizes prohibition ... The psychoanalytic name for this obscene injunction for this obscene call, ENJOY, is superego. The problem today is not how to get rid of your inhibitions and to be able to spontaneously enjoy. The problem is how to get rid of this injunction to enjoy.

~ Slavoj Žižek

Among peoples who possess a highly developed pugnacious instinct we find the greatest progress in the arts, sciences, social and political organization, commerce and industry. The instinct takes the milder form of rivalry which is the motive force of the great portion of the serious labors of mankind.

~ Holly Estil Cunningham

It is a well known fact that even among highly cultured peoples the belief in animism prevails generally. Even the scholar may kick the chair against which he accidentally stumbles, and derive great satisfaction from thus 'getting even' with the perverse chair.

~ Holly Estil Cunningham

Tom felt his darkness. His father was beautiful and clever, his mother was short and mathematically sure. Each of his brothers and sisters had looks or gifts or fortune. Tom loved all of them passionately, but he felt heavy and earth-bound. He climbed ecstatic mountains and floundered in the rocky darkness between the peaks. He had spurts of bravery but they were bracketed in battens of cowardice.

~ John Steinbeck

striid andWthdraw into yourself. Our master-reason asks no more than to act justly, and thereby to achieve calm.

~ Marcus Aurelius

Our life is just as long or short as our remembering: as rich as our imagining, as vibrant as our feeling, and as profound as our thinking.

~ Neel Burton

True humility derives from a proper perspective of our human condition: one among billions on a small planet among billions, like a fungus on a tiny fragment of cheese. Of course, it is nearly impossible for human beings to remain this objective for very long, but truly humble people are nonetheless far more conscious of the insignificance of their true relations, an insignificance that verges on non-existence. A speck of dust does not think itself more superior or inferior than another, nor does it concern itself for what other specks of dust might or might not think. Enthralled by the miracle of existence, the truly humble person lives not for herself or her image, but for life itself, in a condition of pure peace and pleasure.

~ Neel Burton

No explanation is ever as good as not having one.

~ Marty Rubin

How hurtful it can be to deny one's true self and live a life of lies just to appease others.

~ June Ahern

She was reflecting back on a truth she had learned over the years: that people heard what they wanted to hear, saw what they wanted, believed what they wanted.

~ Jeffery Deaver

You have to be able to recognize your truths in the daylight before you can find them in the dark.

~ Kelli Jae Baeli

Trustful people are the pure at heart, as they are moved by the zeal of their own trustworthiness.

~ Criss Jami

Take lightly what you hear about individuals. We need not distort trust for our paltry little political agendas. We tend to trust soulless, carried information more than we trust soulful human beings; but really most people aren't so bad once you sit down and have an honest, one-on-one conversation with them, once, with an open heart, you listen to their explanations as to why they act the way they act, or say what they say, or do what they do.

~ Criss Jami

An outree explanation, violating all our preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a novelty. We should scratch round industriously till we found something less excentric.

~ William James

Be honest. This applies to every area of your life. Sketchiness is not an attractive trait. No more trying to cover up your baggage, sweeping things under the rug, withholding truth, blatant lying, or even telling seemingly ‘harmless’ white lies or half-truths – release the need to lie completely! Start NOW.

~ Alaric Hutchinson

The greater the gap between self perception and reality, the more aggression is unleashed on those who point out the discrepancy.

~ Stefan Molyneux