We can only bring about change in our lives when we clearly see two truths: that the pain of remaining the same is greater than the pain of fighting our toughest battles, and that by taking the biggest risks, we gain the most valuable rewards.

We may not be able to control life’s circumstances, but we always have a choice about how we use our minds to respond to them.

Continued observations in clinical psychological practice lead almost inevitably to the conclusion that deeper and more fundamental than sexuality, deeper than the craving for social power, deeper even than the desire for possessions, there is a still more generalized and universal craving in the human make-up. It is the craving for knowledge of the right...

Believe it or not, your body has nothing but unconditional love for you. The proof? Without any effort on your part, your heart is beating, your lungs are breathing, and the rhythm of life is graciously flowing through you every second of every day—unconditionally.

While your ego is always trying to figure out its place in the world, your true self knows that your place is always right here, right now.

Your current body is the only body that can take you to your new body—so be kind to it.

The reason we have such a difficult time losing weight permanently is not because we are making bad choices, but because we are not stopping our automatic subconscious programmed behaviors in their tracks.

While most people are playing it safe and doing everything they can to avoid pain, successful people know that they must face their fears and do what needs to be done regardless of how they feel. They don’t necessarily like the hard work, but they’re willing to do it because they like the results.

Whole life is a search for beauty. But, when the beauty is found inside, the search ends and a beautiful journey begins.

In this quiet place on a quiet streetwhere no one ever finds usgently, lovingly, freedom gives back our pain.–from poem In a Quiet Place on a Quiet Street

. . . the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull.

I see dull people as projects … to be reformed

The loss of a child exploits the emotions of each individual it encounters.

Patience is supported & nurtured by a quality of forgiveness.

Nakajima’s past would always be there, so the foundation could crumble at any moment. That’s what happens, I realized, when people destroy other people.

Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.

One can learn from what is not said.

The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who had lost their faith.

Only when we learn to value the differences among us can we achieve the true spirit of humanity.

We forget very easily what gives us pain.

To a certain degree,We all seek, life’s purpose and meaning,love, peace and joy,and knowledge, wealth and power…

Envy is a sign of insecurity, yes; but so is longing to be envied.

Because sugar is not arsenic, many graves are full.

People who cannot trust are themselves not trustworthy, and therefore cannot be entrusted with important things.

No matter what anyone says, no matter the excuse or explanation, whatever a person does in the end is what he intended to do all along.

The qualities required to be a good leader are usually incompatible with the qualities required to become a leader.

As the philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they know only their own side of the question.

The guilty are uncomfortable with silence.

Love, experienced thus, is a constant challenge; it is not a resting place, but moving, growing, working together; even when there is harmony or conflict, joy or sadness, is secondary to the fundamental fact that two people experience themselves, rather than by fleeing from themselves. There is only one proof for the presence of love:...

Woman’s fear of the female Self, of the experience of the numinous archetypal Feminine, becomes comprehensible when we get a glimpse – or even only a hint – of the profound otherness of female selfhood as contrasted to male selfhood. Precisely that element which, in his fear of the Feminine, the male experiences as the...

The hardcore drug addicts that I treat, are, without exception, people who have had extraordinarily difficult lives. The commonality is childhood abuse. These people all enter life under extremely adverse circumstances. Not only did they not get what they need for healthy development; they actually got negative circumstances of neglect. I don’t have a single...

The borderline Queen experiences what therapists call “oral greediness”. The desperate hunger of the borderline Queen is akin to the behavior of an infant who had gone too long between feelings. Starved, frustrated, and beyond the ability to calm of soothe herself, she grabs, flails, and wails until at last the nipple is planted securely...

If there is one thing developmental psychologists have learned over the years, it is that parents don’t have to be brilliant psychologists to succeed. They don’t have to be supremely gifted teachers. Most of the stuff parents do with flashcards and special drills and tutorials to hone their kids into perfect achievement machines don’t have...

Shall we go?’ he murmured, perhaps regretting his decision to show me his army of plastic cartoon figurines.

No ideology or psychological theory can possibly do justice to the full range of human experience.

Suffering is just about the easiest of all human activities; being happy is just about the hardest. And happiness requires, not surrender to guilt, but emancipation from guilt.

Unable to penetrate to the secret place of his soul where his motives lay hidden, he believed that a supernatural voice had called him onward, and that a supernatural power had obstructed his retreat.

But it was not only a feeling of guilt which drove him into danger. He detested the pettiness that made life semilife and men semimen. He wished to put his life on one of a pair of scales and death on the other. He wished each of his acts, indeed each day, each hour, each...

Free man needs loyalty to the self first of all, and this implies the right to be himself

striid andWthdraw into yourself. Our master-reason asks no more than to act justly, and thereby to achieve calm.

All you need is one safe anchor to keep you grounded when the rest of your life spins out of control

Leave him.” But she knows it won’t be that easy. He will promise to change. He’ll get friends and relatives to feel sorry for him and pressure her to give him another chance. He’ll get severely depressed, causing her to worry whether he’ll be all right. And, depending on what style of abuser he is,...

But, mad or sane, Matthews was a man of no ordinary persistence. He was not prepared to renounce the peace plan, any more than he would be prepared to renounce his madness a few years later. A month later he was back in France, this time for an extended stay.The optimistic dawn of his revolutionary...

A beautiful day begins with a beautiful mindset. Every day you wake up, think about what a privilege it is to simply be alive and healthy. Stop focusing on the negatives and everything that could go wrong and start thinking about what could go right. Better yet, think of everything that already is right. Be...

I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.

Thinking is computation, I claim, but that does not mean that the computer is a good metaphor for the mind. The mind is a set of modules, but the modules are not encapsulated boxes or circumscribed swatches on the surface of the brain. The organization of our mental modules comes from our genetic program, but...

Asshole Proximity Disorder

To be yourself is in many ways to be inconvenient to others. Only placaters and appeasers get along with other people all the time and that’s not really getting along with anyone. That’s just self erasure.

If you discovered something that made you tighten inside, you had better try to learn more about it.

From what deep springs of character our personal philosophies issue, we cannot be sure. In philosophers themselves we seem always able to notice some deep internal correspondence between the man and his philosophy. Are our philosophies, then, merely the inevitable outcome of the body of fate and personal circumstance that is thrust upon each of...