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Psychology Quotes

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Psychology Quotes

“All The World's An Asylum (Sonnet 1235) All the world's an asylum, All the people are lunatics. Some are but loonies of love, Some loonies run by prejudice. Some die running in love of currency, Some die sharing the currency of love. Beyond the grasp of dollar and euro, Love is the only nonvolatile currency in the world. It's good to be a loonie, If the reason is justly humane. When human welfare is at stake, It's only logical to be insane. Sane, insane - be as the need arises, To hell with the judgment of nitwits! In an organic world no sanity is absolute, Boldly walk the spectrum as the purpose fits.”

“Women are more likely than men to have higher disgust sensitivities, which fits with their greater sensitivity to smells generally, though this does not result un differences in perception or consumption. Other individual differences include proneness to mood dysregulation, like bipolar disorder and major depression, such that more intense and prolonged periods of negative affect -sadness and fear- are experienced.”

“I remember a study that was done in the seventies (a study I've been trying to find unsuccessfully since the advent of the internet). It was a study of psychologists and psychiatrists, not of patients. They filled out three questionnaires, true or false questions. One was for the traits of a healthy man, next was for traits of a healthy woman, the third for traits of a healthy human being. The traits of a healthy man and human were the same, but a healthy woman was very different. Completely different. You know--softer, sweeter, more empathetic, less self-centered, less ambitious, more dependent. And these were the people who were treating people who were trying to live healthy lives.”

“He hit her again. “I’m sorry,” she said. The young woman was scared, but this strange, obedient part of her at that moment wanted to get nearer to him. She’d tested him, but now it was time to go home. He terrified her. She wanted to get under the monster’s large arms and look to it for help. While he often hit her, he was capable of sweet nights and being lovely sometimes. She wanted that part of him to return, and maybe she could bring that soft part back if she surrendered. The deep voice always commanded her. It told her what to think and what to do so that even when he caused her pain, she would look to him for pleasure.”

“It is not the trauma itself that is the source of illness but the unconscious, repressed, hopeless despair over not being allowed to give expression to what one has suffered and the fact that one is not allowed to show and is unable to experience feelings of rage, anger, humiliation, despair, helplessness, and sadness. This causes many people to commit suicide because life no longer seems worth living if they are totally unable to live out all these strong feelings that are part of their true self.”

“All evil seems to arise from the desire to dominate others. Most men in our society are taught from a very early age to try to dominate. It isn’t something that they think about consciously. It operates at a subconscious level. They are taught by the adults around them and their peers. Someone dominates them and they in turn try to dominate others. They do it without even realizing it and they do it without even thinking about why. It is without question. In their conscious awareness they may aspire to grandiose ideals but their actions speak for what really motivates them from a subconscious level.”

“I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centered, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal. College transported me to a new town, where I tried, one more time, to reinvent myself. Becoming someone new, I could correct the errors of my past. At first I was optimistic: I could pull it off. But in the end, no matter where I went, I could never change. Over and over I made the same mistake, hurt other people, and hurt myself in the bargain. Just after I turned twenty, this thought hit me: Maybe I've lost the chance to ever be a decent human being. The mistakes I'd committed—maybe they were part of my very makeup, an inescapable part of my being. I'd hit rock bottom, and I knew it.”

“I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centered, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.”

“No, I'd better not speak of it. It's a secret for me alone, of vital importance for me, and not to be put into words. This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a sudden as I dreamed. Just like the feeling for my child, there was no surprise in this either. Faith—or not faith—I don't know what it is—but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul. I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly. There will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife. I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it. I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying. But my life now—my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me—every minute of it—is no more meaningless as it was before, but has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.”

“Bana iyi olduğumun söylenmesine bayılıyorum. Neden mi ? Kesinlikle, beni iyi olduğuma ikna ettiğinden filan değil. Beni, bir başka insanı benim iyi iş çıkardığımı düşündürtecek kadar etkileyebilmiş olduğuma ikna eder de ondan. O insan için ben hakikaten iyiyimdir. Bu gerçekten de harikadır; zeka düzeyiniz doğuştan bellidir, sizin elinizde değildir, hem korkunç ve iğrenç insanların da son derece parlak zekaları olabilir; ya da yakışıklı olabilirler, den den; sağlıklı; den den; müzikal yetenek, den den; yazarlık kabiliyeti, den den; ne varsa her şey, den den. Oysa iyi olma, bir başkasını mutlu edebilme kapasitesi tamamen sizin yarattığınız, yaratılması son derece güç ve fakat bir o kadar da tatmin edicidir.”

“Lingering, bottled-up anger never reveals the 'true colors' of an individual. It, on the contrary, becomes all mixed up, rotten, confused, forms a highly combustible, chemical compound then explodes as something foreign, something very different than one's natural self.”

“These scientific studies countervail the influential claims of the Kants, Nietzsches, and Rands about the nature of human goodness. Compassion is not a blind emotions that catapults people pell-mell toward the next warm body that walks by. Instead, compassion is exquisitely attuned to harm and vulnerability in others. Compassion does not render people tearful idlers, moral weaklings, or passive onlookers but individuals who will take on the pain of others, even when given the chance to skip out on such difficult action or in anonymous conditions. The kindness, sacrifice, and jen that make up healthy communities are rooted in a bundle of nerves that has been producing caretaking behavior for over 100 million years of mammalian evolution.”

“Every free choice collapses an infinite set of other choices that could be made. In fact, one reason people suffer is precisely this sacrifice. We cannot be everything all at once, and once we choose a way of being, the only direction left is forward. We have to take responsibility for our becoming. Every choice made leads to a meeting with an alternate self, why not consider one over another? When we choose, we also sacrifice”

“87. A clear mirror reflects all things in the world, whether they are judged as “unpleasant,” or “beautiful.” “Unpleasant” things do not damage mirrors. A mirror does not cling to the images it reflects, once something is out of view, no trace is left behind.”