Psychology Quotes

A bully hides his fears with fake bravado. That is the opposite of self-assertiveness.

~ Nathaniel Branden

A game is an opportunity to focus our energy, with relentless optimism, at something we’re good at (or getting better at) and enjoy. In other words, gameplay is the direct emotional opposite of depression.

~ Jane Mcgonigal

At the end of our conversation she (Martha Stout) turned to address you, the reader. She said if you're beginning to feel worried that you may be a psychopath, if you recognize some of those traits in yourself, if you're feeling a creeping anxiety about it, that means you are not one.

~ Jon Ronson

Indeed, man has two different beings inside him. What devil thought of that malicious touch?

~ Stendhal

‎...the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

~ C.g. Jung

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are -- or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms.

~ Stephen R. Covey

How often do we stand convinced of the truth of our early memories, forgetting that they are assessments made by a child? We can replace the narratives that hold us back by inventing wiser stories, free from childish fears, and, in doing so, disperse long-held psychological stumbling blocks.

~ Benjamin Zander

The problem with patience and discipline is that it requires both of them to develop each of them.

~ Thomas M. Sterner

Being hurt personally triggered a curiosity about how such beliefs are formed.

~ Philip G. Zimbardo

The psychopathology of the masses is rooted in the psychology of the individual

~ C.g. Jung

Mr. Grace sounded like a very small child, helpless, hopeless. I had made him fuck himself with his own big tool, like one of those weird experiences you read about in the Penthouse Forum. I had taken off his witch doctor's mask and made him human. But I didn't hold it against him. To err is only human, but it's divine to forgive. I believe that sincerely.

~ Richard Bachman

What moralists describe as the mysteries of the human heart are solely the deceiving thoughts, the spontaneous impulses of self-regard. The sudden changes in character, about which so much has been said, are instinctive calculations for the furtherance of our own pleasures. Seeing himself now in his fine clothes, his new gloves and shoes, Eugène de Rastignac forgot his noble resolve. Youth, when it swerves toward wrong, dares not look in the mirror of conscience; maturity has already seen itself there. That is the whole difference between the two phases of life.

~ Honoré De Balzac

Therapy isn't Radio.We don't need to constantly fill the air with sounds. Sometimes, when its quite, surprising things happen.

~ Mary Pipher

But profound as psychology is, it's a knife that cuts both ways (...). I have purposely resorted to this method, gentlemen of the jury, to show that you can prove anything by it. It all depends on who makes use of it. Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite unconsciously. I am speaking of the abuse of psychology, gentlemen.

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Your emotional understanding about the preciousness of your human birth comes through conscious, repetitive mind training.

~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche

A little later, when breakfast was over and I had not yet gone up-stairs to my room, I had my first interview with Doctor Brandon, the famous alienist who was in charge of the case. I had never seen him before, but from the first moment that I looked at him I took his measure, almost by intuition. He was, I suppose, honest enough -- I have always granted him that, bitterly as I have felt toward him. It wasn't his fault that he lacked red blood in his brain, or that he had formed the habit, from long association with abnormal phenomena, of regarding all life as a disease. He was the sort of physician -- every nurse will understand what I mean -- who deals instinctively with groups instead of with individuals. He was long and solemn and very round in the face; and I hadn't talked to him ten minutes before I knew he had been educated in Germany, and that he had learned over there to treat every emotion as a pathological manifestation. I used to wonder what he got out of life -- what any one got out of life who had analyzed away everything except the bare structure.

~ Ellen Glasgow

If you fail to believe you will procrastinate or become idealustic about how awesome you are at working hard and managing your time, you never develop a strategy for outmaneuvering your own weakness.

~ David Mcraney

When psychologists Catherine Caldwell-Harris and Ayse Ayçiçegi compared U.S. and Turkish samples, they found that having an orientation inconsistent with societal values is a risk factor for poor mental health. The findings support what the researchers call the personality-culture clash hypothesis: Psychological adjustment depends on the degree of match between personality and the values of surrounding society. To the extent that introverts feel the need to explain, apologize, or feel guilty about what works best for them, they feel alienated not only from society but from themselves.

~ Laurie A. Helgoe

Such a woman is called Mother's FRIEND always ready to give judicious Parental advice and living vicariously on the experience of others

~ Eric Berne

The transitoriness of our existence in now way makes it meaningless. But it does constitute our responsibleness, for everything hinges upon our realizing the essentially transitory possibilities.

~ Viktor E. Frankl

The irrational thoughts were the ones with the power to burn holes in your gut.

~ Keith Ablow

Suicide may be a choice, but not as much as it is expected when everything else fails.

~ Mark Brightlife

DENIALDefense mechanism in which the existence of unpleasant realities is disavowed; refers to keeping out of conscious awareness any aspects of external reality that, if acknowledged, would produce anxiety.

~ Benjamin James Sadock

Through the ages, countless spiritual disciplines have urged us to look within ourselves and seek the truth. Part of that truth resides in a small, dark room -- one we are afraid to enter

~ Matthew J. Pallamary

The world is full of terrible suffering, compared to which the small inconveniences of my childhood are as a drop of rain in the sea.

~ Richard Rhodes

A person will complain about his problems, unwilling to receive solutions, while demanding attention trough a victimization, reflecting lack of responsibility.

~ Mark Brightlife

The power-hungry individual follows a path to his own destruction.

~ Adler

...the characters are useful because of some quirks of our minds, yours and mine. A sentence is understood more easily if it describes what an agent (system 2) does than if it describes what something is, what properties it has.

~ Daniel Kahneman

Psychological man may be going nowhere, but he aims to achieve a certain speed and certainty in going. Like his predecessor, the man of the market economy, he understands morality as that which is conducive to increased activity. The important thing is to keep going.

~ Philip Rieff

We tend to be particularly unaware that we are thinking virtually all the time. The incessant stream of thoughts flowing through our minds leaves us very little respite for inner quiet. And we leave precious little room for ourselves anyway just to be, without having to run around doing things all the time. Our actions are all too frequently driven rather than undertaken in awareness, driven by those perfectly ordinary thoughts and impulses that run through the mind like a coursing river, if not a waterfall. We get caught up in the torrent and it winds up submerging our lives as it carries us to places we may not wish to go and may not even realize we are headed for.Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us rather than to tyrannize us.

~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

Once we know how observant a person is in terms of church attendance, nothing that we can discover about the content of her religious faith adds anything to our understanding or prediction of her good neighborliness...In fact, the statistics suggest that even an atheist who happened to become involved in the social life of the congregation (perhaps through a spouse) is much more likely to volunteer in a soup kitchen than the most fervent believer who prays alone. It is religious belongingness that matters for neighborliness, not religious believing.

~ Robert Putnam

We raise our children, especially girls, to ignore their spontaneious reactions-we teach them not to rock the societal boat...By the time she is thirty, the valient little girl's Ick!-her tendency to respond, to rock the boat, when someone's actions are really mean, may have been exciese from her behavior, and perhaps from her very mind.

~ Martha Stout

Do we secretly idolize our imagined opposites, yearning to become the role models for others we know we could never be for ourselves?

~ John Waters

You have the Answer. Just get quiet enough to hear it. ~Pat Obuchowski

~ Laurie Stevens

In life, we make the best decisions we can with the information we have on hand.

~ Agnes Kamara-Umunna

Remind yourself that your mental & emotional health are important.

~ Allan Lokos

Our work is not to become a better person, but to become present to the perfection we already are.

~ Allan Lokos

I believe that there are parts to human nature that cannot be reached by either legislation or education, but require the power of God to deal with.

~ Stephen R. Covey

You want to be the first to do something. You want to create something. You want to innovate something...I often think of Edison inventing the light bulb. That's what I want to do. I want to drive over the bridge coming out of New York there and look down on that sea of lights that is New Jersey and say, `Hey, I did that!'

~ David Keirsey

Patience is both the tool for and the result of, our efforts.

~ Allan Lokos