2,269 Psychology Quotes

Whereas Freud was for the most part concerned with the morbid effects of unconscious repression, Jung was more interested in the manifestations of unconscious expression, first in the dream and eventually in all the more orderly products of religion and art and morals.

The portions of a woman which appeal to man's depravity Are constructed with considerable care.

Tender-handed stroke a nettle, And it stings you for your pains; Grasp it like a man of mettle, And it soft as silk remains. 'Tis the same with common natures: Use 'em kindly, they rebel; But be rough as nutmeg-graters, And the rogues obey you well.

The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.

I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.

A man must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings.

Crime, folly, sickness and all phenomena must be contemplated with complete freedom from fear aversion or shame. Otherwise we shall fail to see accurately, and interpret intelligently; in which case we shall be unable to outwit and outfight them.

Here again, there is no tabulation; for us it is left to sacrifice literary charm, and even some accuracy, in order to bring out the one great point. The cause of human sectarianism is not lack of sympathy in thought, but in speech; and this it is our not unambitious design to remedy.

I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.

Adaptation to one's environment makes for a sort of survival; but after all, the supreme victory is only won by those who prove themselves of so much hardier stuff than the rest that no power on earth is able to destroy them. The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Intolerance is evidence of impotence.

As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow.

For some unknown reason, bad-boys draw you in despite the fact that they are jerks.

The striving for significance, this sense of yearning, always points out to us that all psychological phenomena contain a movement that starts from a feeling of inferiority and reach upward. The theory of Individual Psychology of psychological compensation states that the stronger the feeling of inferiority, the higher the goal for personal power.

To be human means to feel inferior.

Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.

I don't believe Fermat had a proof. I think he fooled himself into thinking he had a proof.

Maybe that's what Hell is. You go mad. And all your demons come and get you just as fast as you can think them up.

Thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer able to see it.

To understand a man, you must know his memories. The same is true of a nation.

But who ever yet was offered a secret and declined it?

It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution.

Nothing is more capable of troubling our reason, and consuming our health, than secret notions of jealousy in solitude.

It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.

The secret to humor is surprise.

I love her too, but our neuroses just don't match.

Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good.

I'll give up my bad habits as soon as equally satisfying good habits become available.

Is it you and I who are crazy, or is it everybody else?

Most of my problems have no answer or else the answer is worse than the problem.

I'm in search of myself - have you seen me anywhere?

Forgiveness of enemies can only come upon their repentance.

In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.

Misery still delights to trace Its semblance in another's case.

Ever let the Fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home.

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other.

The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.

A thing is important if anyone think it important.

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

Who does not see that we are likely to ascertain the distinctive significance of religious melancholy and happiness, or of religious trances, far better by comparing them as conscientiously as we can with other varieties of melancholy, happiness, and trance, than by refusing to consider their place in any more general series, and treating them as if they were outside of nature's order altogether?

It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.

Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity.

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.

I have always been a Laugher, disturbing people who are not laughers, upsetting whole audiences at theatres... I laugh, that's all. I love to laugh. Laugher to me is being alive. I have had rotten times, and I have laughed through them. Even in the midst of the very worst times I have laughed.

According to the technical language of old writers, a thing and its qualities are described as subject and attributes; and thus a man's faculties and acts are attributes of which he is the subject. The mind is the subject in which ideas inhere. Moreover, the man's faculties and acts are employed upon external objects; and from objects all his sensations arise. Hence the part of a man's knowledge which belongs to his own mind, is subjective: that which flows in upon him from the world external to him, is objective.

A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays And confident tomorrows.

Habit rules the unreflecting herd.

I have an intense desire to return to the womb. Anybody's.

Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education.

Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.

Every ideology is contrary to human psychology.

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.

It is now no mystery that some quite influential 'philosophers' were 'mentally' ill.

The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.

The important thing is not to know who 'I' is or what 'I' is. You'll never succeed. There are no words for it. The important thing is to drop the labels.

We will act consistently with our view of who we truly are, whether that view is accurate or not.

When people are like each other they tend to like each other.

You see, it's never the environment; it's never the events of our lives, but the meaning we attach to the events- how we interpret them- that shapes who we are today and who we'll become tomorrow.

Men who can succeed in deceiving no one else will succeed at last in deceiving themselves.

There is nothing perhaps so generally consoling to a man as a well-established grievance; a feeling of having been injured, on which his mind can brood from hour to hour, allowing him to plead his own cause in his own court, within his own heart,- and always to plead it successfully.

Love ceases to be a pleasure when it ceases to be a secret.

The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.

The only thing I am afraid of is fear.

Life may have no meaning -- or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.

Everything takes longer than you expect - even when you expect it to take longer than you expect.

Accept me for what I am - completely unacceptable.

Don't let yourself suffer needlessly - find a need to suffer.

Cling to your insecurity - in this world, it's the only thing you can be sure of.

It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: 'The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.' In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.

I resolved from the beginning of my quest that I would not be misled by sentiment and desire into beliefs for which there was no good evidence.

The method of 'postulating' what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.

Boredom is therefore a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

Most men do not feel in themselves the competence required for leading their group to victory, and therefore seek out a captain who appears to possess the courage and sagacity necessary for the achievement of supremacy. Even in religion this impulse appears. Nietzsche accused Christianity of inculcating a slave-morality, but ultimate triumph was always the goal. 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.'

I greatly doubt whether the men who become pirate chiefs are those who are filled with retrospective terror of their fathers, or whether Napoleon, at Austerlitz, really felt that he was getting even with Madame Mere. I know nothing of the mother of Attila, but I rather suspect that she spoilt the little darling, who subsequently found the world irritating because it sometimes resisted his whims.

I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology.... Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called `education.' Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part.... It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment.

Chess is war over the board. The object is to crush the opponent's mind.

Don't even mention losing to me. I can't stand to think of it.

What you HABITUALLY THINK largely determines what you will ultimately become.

Cease negative mental chattering. - If you think a thing is impossible, you'll make it impossible. Pessimism blunts the tools you need to succeed.

You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe.

A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.

My father is the jailhouse. My father is your system.... I am only what you made me. I am only a reflection of you.

Look down at me and you see a fool; look up at me and you see a god; look straight at me and you see yourself.

That most risky and volatile of all things- a self-pitying majority.

it's what people know about themselves inside, that makes them afraid.

We are all our own graveyards I believe; we squat amongst the tombs of the people we were. If we're healthy, every day is a celebration, a Day of the Dead, in which we give thanks for the lives that we lived; and if we are neurotic we brood and mourn and wish that the past was still present.