20th-century Psychologist Quotes

Jean Piaget

Tomas Tranströmer

B. F. Skinner

Abraham Maslow

Steven Pinker

Carl Rogers

Hans Eysenck

Right action tends to be defined in terms of general individual rights and standards that have been critically examined and agreed upon by the whole society.

Lawrence Kohlberg

In insecure relationships, we disguise our vulnerabilities so our partner never really sees us.

Scientists, especially when they leave the particular field in which they have specialized, are just as ordinary, pigheaded and unreasonable as anybody else.

People do not marry people, not real ones anyway; they marry what they think the person is; they marry illusions and images. The exciting adventure of marriage is finding out who the partner really is.

When you gossip about another person, listeners unconsciously associate you with the characteristics you are describing, ultimately leading to those characteristics' being transferred to you. So, say positive and pleasant things about friends and colleagues, and you are seen as a nice person. In contrast, constantly complain about their failings, and people will unconsciously apply the negative traits and incompetence to you.

Richard Wiseman

When people say women can't be trusted because they cycle every month, my response is that men cycle every day, so they should only be allowed to negotiate peace treaties in the evening.

In some instances, you may care so much about the person who has hurt you, or be so unable to be angry with him (or with anyone), that you rationalize his hurtful acts by finding some basis in your own actions for his hurtful behavior; you then feel guilty rather than angry. Put in other terms, you become angry with yourself rather than with the one who hurt you.

The advantages of having decisions made by groups are often lost because of powerful psychological pressures that arise when the members work closely together, share the same set of values and, above all, face a crisis situation that puts everyone under intense stress

When we inject people with positivity, their outlook expands. They see the big picture. When we inject them with neutrality or negativity, their peripheral vision shrinks. There is no big picture, no dots to connect.

Barbara Fredrickson

Atheism may be, in some cases, just verbal behavior masking personal feelings that may be very different, perhaps even deeply religious.

Children often have been likened to scientists. Both ask fundamental questions about the nature of the universe. Both also ask innumerable questions that seem utterly trivial to others. Finally, both are granted by society the time to pursue their musings.

Robert S. Siegler

Unconscious decisions for action go on constantly inside the head.

Robert E. Ornstein

Reducing complexity by order formation is the number one skill needed by all leaders in the twenty-first century

Imagine how dull life would be if variables assessed for admission to a graduate program really did predict who would succeed and who would fall. Life would be intolerable - no hope, no challenge

Growth and change are never easy...If it were easy, you would have done it long ago.

Lawrence LeShan

Misleading may be the claims that procedures [of animal testing] are carried out under anaesthesia. Restraining devices and paralysing drugs can today be so effective that an anaesthetic is often unnecessary from the purely practical point of view. The risk of giving a dose too large and thereby losing an expensive chimpanzee, for example, may often tempt a scientist or technician, inexperienced with sophisticated anaesthetic techniques, to give a dose too small, from which the animal quickly recovers — but not of course until after it has been strapped securely to the operating table.

Richard D. Ryder

Our own vitality as well as that of others frightens us, if it still manages to surface, we respond with rage and turn against our own freedom. It is vitality itself that we are opposing.

Genuineness requires listening through both verbal and nonverbal channels.

Joseph Michelli

You're going to die soon enough anyway; even if it's a hundred years from now, that's still the blink of a cosmic eye. In the meantime, live like a scientist - even a controversial one with only an ally or two in all the world - and treat life as a grand experiment, blood, sweat, tears and all. Bear in mind that there's no such thing as a failed experiment - only data.

When a couple gets to the last stage, one or both partners may have an affair. But an affair is usually a symptom of a dying marriage, not the cause. The end of that marriage could have been predicted long before either spouse strayed.

Yoga is an exquisite form of bodywork that eliminates the residue that has become lodged in the tissue.

Richard Miller (psychologist)

The emotional findings, then, suggest that to gain the most benefit from writing about life's traumas, acknowledge the negative but celebrate the positive.

James W. Pennebaker

Two kinds of reading can be distinguished. I call them reading like a reader and reading like a writer... when you read like a reader, you identify with the characters in the story. The story is what you learn about. When you read like a writer, you identify with the author and learn about writing.

Frank Smith (psycholinguist)

Your imaginings can have as much power over you as your reality, or even more.

Dreams are a reservoir of knowledge and experience yet they are often overlooked as a vehicle for exploring reality. In the dream state our bodies are at rest, yet we see and hear, move about and are even able to learn. When we make good use of the dream state it is almost as if our lives were doubled: instead of a hundred years we live to be two hundred — Tibetan Buddhist Tarthang Tulku from

Stephen LaBerge