20th-century Psychologist Quotes

The facts of the matter are that we have known for a long time that diagnoses are often not useful or reliable, but we have nevertheless continued to use them. We now know that we cannot distinguish insanity from sanity.

The making of thoughts is the most common instance of human participation in the creative act.

How can we create a cultural legacy of happiness? Let other people matter.

Christopher Peterson (psychologist)

Chance is commonly viewed as a self-correcting process in which a deviation in one direction induces a deviation in the opposite direction to restore the equilibrium. In fact, deviations are not "corrected" as a chance process unfolds, they are merely diluted.

An affective response more appropriate to another's situation than one's own.

A society or culture which is disposed to view the world in Manichean terms will be more vulnerable to control by propaganda.

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

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)

Genuineness requires listening through both verbal and nonverbal channels.

Joseph Michelli

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

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)

The idea that positive illusions are in the service of sef-esteem virtually requires that they stay in check. If one develops substantially unrealistic expectations regarding the future that greatly exceed what one is actually able to accomplish, then one is set up for failure and disappointment, leading to lower self-esteem.

Shelley E. Taylor

As we have come to view teaching, it begins with an act of reason, continues with a process of reasoning, culminates in performances of imparting, eliciting, involving, or enticing, and is then thought about some more until the process can begin again

Causation depends on an extraordinary turning of reality at a particular instant such that one event transmutes into another.

The most successful executives are often men who have built their own companies. Ironically their very success frequently brings to them and members of their families personal problems of an intensity rarely encountered by professional managers. And these problems make family businesses probably the most difficult to operate.

There is no one right answer to creative problems.

For most of us even the imagined threat of criticism functions to control our behavior. We are haunted to some degree by questions about our self-worth. As a consequence, we continually attempt to prove to ourselves and others that we are okay people, credible, trustworthy, and competent.

Every bad feeling is potential energy toward a more right way of being if you give it space to move toward its rightness

The person who is capable of producing a large number of ideas per unit of time, other things being equal, has a greater chance of having significant ideas.

Every avenue which could lead to an increase of our knowledge deserves to be followed, regardless of the consequences. This is the professional code, or rather one of the professional codes, we find in men of science.

In the midst of conflict, there is absolutely nothing that produces gains as dramatically as listening.

Neil Clark Warren

The addictive experience is the totality of effect produced by an involvement; it stems from pharmacological and physiological sources, but takes its ultimate form from cultural and individual constructions of experience.