For a minute, the fantasy frightened her, but ultimately, this fear saved her from feeling alone.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly. The fundamental conceptions of psychology are practically very clear to us, but theoretically they are very confused, and one easily makes the obscurest assumptions...

It’s not that there is no small talk…It’s that it comes not at the beginning of conversations but at the end…Sensitive people…’enjoy small talk only after they’ve gone deep’ says Strickland. ‘When sensitive people are...

We use concepts like “consciousness”—“mind”—“personality,” but we don’t really know yet what these things are.’ He was shaking his head. ‘Not really. Not at all.

Then the weeks rolled by in a sinister psych ward haze filled with white-coated orderlies and rocking whack-job patients torn straight from some old Jack Nicholson film, all anti-psychotic meds and padded lonely cells…

When a love-relationship is at its height there is no room left for any interest in the environment; a pair of lovers are sufficient to themselves

What would it be like to think what a gerbil thinks, from a gerbil’s point of view? Kind of like Thomas Nigel’s 1974 paper, ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?’ There’s a subjective...

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization.

The most common emotional defense is avoidance (an ineffective coping skill for any stressor) as expressed through denial (e.g., “That wasn’t really bad, I barely remember it”).

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.

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...

Dissociation of the mind into logic-tight compartments is by no means confined to the population of the asylum. It is a common, and perhaps inevitable, occurrence in the psychology of every human being. Our political...

Never trust the one who praise you frankly

The stone has no uncertainties, no urge to communicate, and is eternally the same for thousands of years, while I am only a passing phenomenon which bursts into all kinds of emotions, like a flame...

The paradox is that, while a concern with past and future is obviously central to psychological functioning, to behave as though one were indeed in the past or future, as many do, pollutes the lively...

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is...

For example, in order to identify these schemas or clarify faulty relational expectations, therapists working from an object relations, attachment, or cognitive behavioral framework often ask themselves (and their clients) questions like these: 1. What...

You don’t think your way to a new way of living. You live your way to a new way of thinking.

Forms have changed through the centuries in obedience to the external world to which all forms belong.

Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions.

Don’t worry, everyone is mentally ill, they just haven’t figured out a name for yours yet.

A weakling is incapable of sincerity.

Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men.A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.

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.

Yeni bilim’in gelişmesiyle, geleneksel din biçimleri, giderek etkisini yitirmiş Avrupa’da, dinsel değerlerin yitirilmesi tehlikesi başgöstermiştir. Dostoyevski bu korkuyu şu ünlü tümcesinde dile getirmiştir: “Tanrı yoksa, her şey mümkündür.

Everyone deserves what they choose to tolerate.

Most of the psychological differences between men and women seem to come from differences in their reproductive system

I do not use psychiatric terms in my writing because the entrenched and developing behaviours were perfectly normal reactions to abnormal situations.

It’s not a secret that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

Id me didn’t have to be concerned with long-term consequences. He was my instinctive, primitive self, driven by my most primal impulses. I wondered, briefly, if ‘id’ and ‘idiot’ came from the same root.

There is a tendency for humans to consciously see what they wish to see. They literally have difficulty seeing things with negative connotations while seeing with increasing ease items that are positive. For example, words...

Chances are, when you were young, you were told, in effect, “Listen, kid, here is the news: life is not about you. Life is not about what you want. What you want is not important....

It is crucial for us to understand the origins of our low self-esteem before we can transcend it.

It may well have been, too, that the smiling moderation with which she faced and answered these blasphemies, that this tender and hypocritical rebuke appeared to her frank and generous nature as a particularly shameful...

The world is mere change, and this life, opinion.

An odd thing about perception is that when we identify some new thing with one or more of our five senses, it is not really, immutably real — it is a passing will o’ the...

I’m psychologically equipped for this.

We are now edging across the boundary – always a porous one – between self-justification and fantasy. Matthews’ story is by no means a complete fantasy: we can recognise every event. But the frame of...

There is only one “now.” Realize how rich you are in it. Right now you are creating history…your legacy. Make your time count. Do not wish your moments away. Do not ruin today by focusing...

Man is many things, but he is not rational.

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.

Vengeance against predators is meals on wheels.

If you want kids, choose your girlfriend like your future child has the deciding vote.

Il y a dans l’exercice du pouvoir un moment particulièrement réussi, quand l’individu se soumet aux désirs des autres. Non seulement avec spontanéité mais avec une sensation de vertu… Le moment le plus jouissif c’est...

Working with people is basically not a question of formal education; working with people is a question of energy and awareness. Everyone can basically work with people. It is a question of developing a presence...

Many things are mechanical and should remain mechanical. But mechanical thoughts, mechanical feelings—that is what has to be studied and can and should be changed. Mechanical thinking is not worth a penny. You can think...

What is humor?’ one of their professors had posed, and he had answered, ”nondangerous, unexpectedly inappropriate juxtaposition.

When you want to know how things really work, study them when they’re coming apart.

A man’s Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house.

Psychological man may be going nowhere, but he aims to achieve a certain speed and certainty in going. Like his predecessor, the man of the market economy, he understands morality as that which is conducive...