Quotes by Psychologists

Gossip is a policeman and a teacher. Without it, there would be chaos and ignorance.
Jonathan Haidt
The expectation of intelligent gossip is a powerful motive for serious self-criticism, more powerful than New Year resolutions to improve one's decision making at work and at home.
Daniel Kahneman
Man lives on earth not once, but three times: the first stage of his life is his continual sleep; the second, sleeping and waking by turns; the third, waking forever.
Gustav Fechner
But had Minkowski and Einstein not recognized it long before us, our schizophrenic children would have taught us that space-time is a unity that precedes any separate understanding of either category; just as grasping this unity is a precondition for understanding causality.
Bruno Bettelheim
Human beings had two basic orientations: HAVING and BEINGHAVING: seeks to acquire, posses things even peopleBEING: focuses on the experience; exchanging, engaging, sharing with other people
Erich Fromm
But she just couldn’t stop checking her phone; she wantedto stop, tried to stop, but the pull would not let her go. It wasa strange experience for her to be doing the obsessive phone-checkingthing. Vanessa talked about it, and she had heard storiesabout it from other friends. One date with a guy and suddenlythe phone becomes like an appendage endowed with some superpower to predict your future.
Jacqueline Simon Gunn
The rest of the short walk was silent. It was that loud sortof silence where the absence is painful, when there’s so much tosay, but nothing is said.
Jacqueline Simon Gunn
Although stigmatizing attitudes are not limited to mental illness, the public seems to disapprove persons with psychiatric disabilities significantly more than persons with related conditions such as physical illness (34-36). Severe mental illness has been likened to drug addiction, prostitution, and criminality (37,38). Unlike physical disabilities, persons with mental illness are perceived by the public to be in control of their disabilities and responsible for causing them (34,36). Furthermore, research respondents are less likely to pity persons with mental illness, instead reacting to psychiatric disability with anger and believing that help is not deserved (35,36,39)."World Psychiatry. 2002 Feb; 1(1): 16–20.PMCID: PMC1489832Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illnessPATRICK W CORRIGAN and AMY C WATSON
Patrick W. Corrigan
Footnotes the little dogs yapping at the heels of the text.
William James
Accept that all of us can be hurt that all of us can-and surely will at times-fail. Other vulnerabilities like being embarrassed or risking love can be terrifying too. I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst take the risk.
Dr. Joyce Brothers
To find out what one is fitted to do and to secure an opportunity to do it is the key to happiness.
John Dewey
It's weak and despicable to go on wanting things and not trying to get them.
Joanna Field
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James
So far war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community and until an equivalent discipline is organized I believe that war must have its way.
William James
So long as the anti-militarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function no moral equivalent of war analogous as one might say to the mechanical equivalent of hate so long they fail to realize the full equities of the situation.
William James
Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.
Dr. Edward De Bono
The growth of understanding follows an ascending spiral rather than a straight line.
Joanna Field
A successful individual typically sets his next goal somewhat but not too much above his last achievement.
Kurt Lewin
Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.
Edward de Bono
We only think when we are confronted with a problem.
John Dewey
The most effective way to ensure the value of the future is to confront the present courageously and constructively.
Rollo May
I can feel guilty about the past apprehensive about the future but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
Abraham Maslow
To the being of fully alive the future is not ominous but a promise it surrounds the present like a halo.
John Dewey
Those who have easy cheerful attitudes tend to be happier than those with less pleasant temperaments regardless of money "making it " or success.
Dr. Joyce Brothers
The exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success is our national disease.
William James
Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void.
William James
Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.
John Dewey
Success is a journey not a destination.
Ben Sweetland
A first rate soup is better than a second rate painting.
Abraham Maslow
It is weak and despicable to go on wanting things and not trying to get them.
Joanna Field
That they can strengthen through the empowerment of others is essential wisdom often gathered by women.
Mary Field Belenky
To be ambitious for wealth and yet always expecting to be poor to be always doubting your ability to get what you long for is like trying to reach east by traveling west. There is no philosophy which will help man to succeed when he is always doubting his ability to do so and thus attracting failure. No matter how hard you work for success if your thought is saturated with the fear of failure it will kill your efforts neutralize your endeavors and make success impossible.
Charles Baudouin
I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst take the risk.
Dr. Joyce Brothers
Being "brave" means doing or facing something frightening. ... Being "fearless" means being without fear.
Penelope Leach
There is only one meaning of life the act of living itself.
Erich Fromm
The opportunities for enjoyment in your life are limitless. If you feel you are not experiencing enough joy you have only yourself to blame.
David E. Bresler
Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life.
Herbert Otto
Sometimes you gotta create what you want to be a part of.
Geri Weitzman
You need to claim the events in your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done which may take some time you are fierce with reality.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
Intimate relationships cannot substitute for a life plan but to have any meaning or viability at all a life plan must include intimate relationships.
Harriet Lerner
When one clings to the myth of superiority one must constantly overlook the virtues and abilities of others.
Anne Wilson Schaef
Confidence ... is directness and courage in meeting the facts of life.
John Dewey
Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.
Erich Fromm
Women who are confident of their abilities are more likely to succeed than those who lack confidence even though the latter may be much more competent and talented and industrious.
Dr. Joyce Brothers
We who are old know that age is more than a disability. It is an intense and varied experience almost beyond our capacity at times but something to be carried high.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
It is not easy to be sure that being yourself is worth the trouble but [we do know] it is our sacred duty.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
William James
Striving for excellence motivates you striving for perfection is demoralizing.
Dr. Harriet Braiker
Change occurs when one becomes what she is not when she tries to become what she is not.
Ruth P. Freedman
I think Dostoevsky was right that every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture where he says this is me and the damned world can go to hell.
Rollo May
Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one's identity.
Erich Fromm
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
John Dewey
Science must constantly be reminded that her purposes are not the only purposes and that the order of uniform causation which she has use for and is therefore right in postulating may be enveloped in a wider order on which she has no claim at all.
William James
Immature love says "I love you because I need you." Mature love says "I need you because I love you."
Erich Fromm
Each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitative-ness.
William James
It is only by risking ... that we live at all.
William James
Only those who dare truly live.
Ruth P. Freedman
However well organized the foundations of life may be life must always be full of risks.
Havelock Ellis
A musician must make music an artist must paint a poet must write if he to be at peace with himself. What a man can be he must be.
Abraham Maslow