Psychology Quotes

“People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.”
― Thomas Szasz

“In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group.”
― Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

“Curiosity is the engine of achievement.”
― Ken Robinson

“The world didn't stop because we weren't in it anymore.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary. ”
― Wilhelm Reich

“A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.”
― B.F Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity

“Music makes me forget myself, my true condition, it carries me off into another state of being, one that isn't my own: under the influence of music I have the illusion of feeling things I don't really feel, of understanding things I don't understand, being able to do things I'm not able to do (...) Can it really be allowable for anyone who feels like it to hypnotize another person, or many other persons, and then do what he likes with them? Particularly if the hypnotist is the first unscrupulous individual who happens to come along?”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata

“The only part of you that hurts when you're given the truth is the part that lives on lies.”
― Stefan Molyneux

“Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

“الوقت الإنساني لا يسير في شكل دائري بل يتقدم في خط مستقيم. من هنا، لا يمكن للإنسان أن يكون سعيداً لأن السعادة رغبة في التكرار.”
― ميلان كونديرا, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Half of life is lost in charming others.
The other half is lost in going through anxieties caused by others.
Leave this play. You have played enough.”
― Rumi

“His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“He's the sort of guy that gets a laugh out of people.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“Sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can kill you.”
― Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil

“The Army might screw you and your girlfriend might dump you and the enemy might kill you, but the shared commitment to safeguard one another’s lives is unnegotiable and only deepens with time. The willingness to die for another person is a form of love that even religions fail to inspire, and the experience of it changes a person profoundly.”
― Sebastian Junger, War

“But insight doesn't necessarily produce self-control. Sometimes you just see your destructiveness more clearly.”
― Keith Ablow, Denial

“Of all individuals, the hated, the shunned, and the peculiar are arguably most themselves. They wear no masks whatsoever in order to be accepted and liked; they do seem most guarded, but only by their own hands: as compared to the populace, they are naked.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“كانت تشعر برغبة جامحة لأن تقول له كما تقول أتفه النساء: «لا تتركني، احتفظ بي إلى جوارك، استعبدني، كن قوياً». ولكنها لا تستطيع ولا تعرف أن تتلفظ بمثل هذه الكلمات.”
― ميلان كونديرا, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Some people stand and move as if they have no right to the space they occupy. They wonder why others often fail to treat them with respect--not realizing that they have signalled others that it is not necessary to treat them with respect.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

“Geniuses never pay attention.”
― Michael Crichton, The Lost World

“My good fortune is not that I've recovered from mental illness. I have not, nor will I ever. My good fortune lies in having found my life.”
― Elyn R. Saks, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

“Seemingly minor yet persistent things penetrate the mind over time making it difficult to ever realize the impact; hence, though quite unfortunate, the most dangerous forms of corruption are those that are subtle and below the radar.”
― Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile

“Consciousness is a mystery that faces the mystery of potential and transforms it into actuality. We do that with every choice we make. Our choices determine the destiny of the world. By making a choice, you alter the structure of reality.”
― Jordan B. Peterson

“Self-awareness is like an onion. There are multiple layers to it, and the more you peel them back, the more likely you're going to start crying at an inappropriate time.”
― Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

“Men write more books. Men give more lectures. Men ask more questions after lectures. Men post more e-mail to Internet discussion groups. To say this is due to patriarchy is to beg the question of the behavior's origin. If men control society, why don't they just shut up and enjoy their supposed prerogatives? The answer is obvious when you consider sexual competition: men can't be quiet because that would give other men a chance to show off verbally. Men often bully women into silence, but this is usually to make room for their own verbal display. If men were dominating public language just to maintain patriarchy, that would qualify as a puzzling example of evolutionary altruism—a costly, risky individual act that helps all of one's sexual competitors (other males) as much as oneself. The ocean of male language that confronts modern women in bookstores, television, newspapers, classrooms, parliaments, and businesses does not necessarily come from a male conspiracy to deny women their voice. It may come from an evolutionary history of sexual selection in which the male motivation to talk was vital to their reproduction.”
― Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature

“Self-discipline is the ability to organize your behavior over time in the service of specific goals.”
― Nathaniel Branden

“ Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder — just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing. Insisting on the humanity of terrorists is, in fact, critical to maintaining their profound responsibility for the evil they commit.
And, if they are human, then they must necessarily not be treated in an inhuman fashion. You cannot lower the moral baseline of a terrorist to the subhuman without betraying a fundamental value.”
― Andrew Sullivan

“But there is no energy unless there is a tension of opposites; hence it is necessary to discover the opposite to the attitude of the conscious mind.”
― C.G. Jung, The Essential Jung: Selected Writings

“The twins were too young to know that these were only history’s henchmen. Sent to square the books and collect the dues from those who broke its laws. Impelled by feelings that were primal yet paradoxically wholly impersonal. Feelings of contempt born of inchoate, unacknowledged fear—civilization’s fear of nature, men’s fear of women, power’s fear of powerlessness. Man’s subliminal urge to destroy what he could neither subdue nor deify.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things