Quotes by Psychologists - Page 51

Faith in the possibilities of continued and rigorous inquiry does not limit access to truth to any channel or scheme of things. It does not first say that truth is universal and then add there is but one road to it.
John Dewey
It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all. By being religious we establish ourselves in possession of ultimate reality at the only points at which reality is given us to guard. Our responsible concern is with our private destiny, after all.
William James
There is no such thing as educational value in the abstract. The notion that some subjects and methods and that acquaintance with certain facts and truths possess educational value in and of themselves is the reason why traditional education reduced the material of education so largely to a diet of predigested materials.
John Dewey
The goal of education is to enable individuals to continue their education.
John Dewey
We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent — people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.
Erich Fromm
See the exquisite contrast of the types of mind! The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular cases, and generalises. Truth, for him, becomes a class-name for all sorts of definite working-values in experience. For the rationalist it remains a pure abstraction, to the bare name of which we must defer. When the pragmatist undertakes to show in detail just why we must defer, the rationalist is unable to recognise the concretes from which his own abstraction is taken. He accuses us of denying truth; whereas we have only sought to trace exactly why people follow it and always ought to follow it. Your typical ultra-abstractions fairly shudders at concreteness: other things equal, he positively prefers the pale and spectral. If the two universes were offered, he would always choose the skinny outline rather than the rich thicket of reality. It is so much purer, clearer, nobler.
William James
Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?
William James
If the meaning of life has become doubtful, if one's relations to others and to oneself do not offer security, then fame is one means to silence one's doubts. It has a function to be compared with that of the Egyptian pyramids or the Christian faith in immortality: it elevates one's individual life from its limitations and instability to the plane of indestructability; if one's name is known to one's contemporaries and if one can hope that it will last for centuries, then one's life has meaning and significance by this very reflection of it in the judgments of others.
Erich Fromm
Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.
John Dewey
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
William James
A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his "normal" contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society. In the process of going further in his analysis, i.e. of growing to greater independence and productivity,his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves.
Erich Fromm
It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when they have lost their way.
Rollo May
Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing but nobody else does.
Steuart Henderson Britt
Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Feel the fear and do it anyway!
Susan Jeffers
I will not die an unlived life.I will not live in fearof falling or catching fire.I choose to inhabit my days,to allow my living to open me,to make me less afraid,more accessible;to loosen my heartuntil it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.I choose to risk my significance,to live so that which came to me as seedgoes to the next as blossom,and that which came to me as blossom,goes on as fruit.
Dawna Markova
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
William James
The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.
William James
We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this—through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication—we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime. One of the most difficult problems is to construct these barriers of such a height and strength that one has a true harbor, a sanctuary away from crippling turmoil and pain, but yet low enough, and permeable enough, to let in fresh seawater that will fend off the inevitable inclination toward brackishness.
Kay Redfield Jamison
Women and men who have established no-lie relationships talk about them with reverence, even when they are not permanent and, in fact, even when they are not romantic. Why? In the no-lie relationship there is acceptance of who each partner is, rather than a shallow idealization. There is a genuine commitment to the relationship beyond the immediate. You each act as though you are in a real partnership that will last.
Dory Hollander
I welcome questions. I hate assumptions.
Red Haircrow
If you think something is missing in your life, it is probably YOU...
Robert Holden
Vital lives are about action. You can't feel warmth unless you create it, can't feel delight until you play, can't know serendipity unless you risk.
Joan Erickson
Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion.
Red Haircrow
Do your own thing on your own terms and get what you came here for
Oliver James
If other people do not understand our behavior—so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being "asocial" or "irrational" in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them. How many lives have been ruined by this need to "explain," which usually implies that the explanation be "understood," i.e. approved. Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds, your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself—to his reason and his conscience—and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation.
Erich Fromm
You don't have to disrespect and insult others simply to hold your own ground. If you do, that shows how shaky your own position is.
Red Haircrow
why are trying so hard to fit in, when you're born to stand out
Oliver James
Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men and from nature. His main aim is profitable exchange of his skills, knowledge, and of himself, his "personality package" with others who are equally intent on a fair and profitable exchange. Life has no goal except the one to move, no principle except the one of fair exchange, no satisfaction except the one to consume.p97.
Erich Fromm
Infantile love follows the principle: "I love because I am loved." Mature love follows the principle: "I am loved because I love." Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you.
Erich Fromm
Self-talk reflects your innermost feelings.
Asa Don Brown
Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an ordination of character which determines the relatedness of the person to the whole world as a whole, not toward one object of love
Erich Fromm
We shouldn't teach great books we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.
B.F. Skinner
Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.
Erich Fromm