20th-century Psychologist Quotes

Philosophers have often looked for the defining feature of humans — language, rationality, culture, and so on. I'd stick with this: Man is the only animal that likes Tabasco sauce.

'Leaders' are rarely ousted by anyone other than would-be leaders. In not wishing to act like 'men', there is no need for us to act like 'women'. The rise of the oppressed should not be a glorification of oppressed characteristics.

Juliet Mitchell

The problem facing a comprehender is analogous to the problem that a detective faces when trying to solve a crime. In both cases there is a set of clues.

David Rumelhart

We should open ourselves to the impossible and embrace a psychology of possibility.

A mechanical encounter or other energy-exchange may cause tissue damage.

James J. Gibson

Actualization of self cannot be sought as a goal in its own right.... Rather, it seems to be a by-product of active commitment of one's talents to some cause, outside the self, such as the quest for beauty, truth, or justice.

After forty years of intensive research on school learning in the United States as well as abroad, my major conclusion is: What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn if provided with appropriate prior and current conditions of learning.

The male has paid a heavy price for his masculine 'privilege' and power. He is out of touch with his emotions and his body. He is playing by the rules of the male game plan and with lemming-like purpose he is destroying himself-emotionally, psychologically and physically.

It has become accepted doctrine that we must attempt to study the whole man. Actually we cannot study even a whole tree or a whole guinea pig. But it is a whole tree and a whole guinea pig that have survived and evolved, and we must make the attempt.

If I had been smarter then I would have let research fail regularly. That would have been more realistic, more rational and more cunning. But I could not do that. I had become a junkie.

Diederik Stapel

Modern children were considerably less innocent than parents and the larger society supposed, and postmodern children are less competent than their parents and the society as a whole would like to believe.... The perception of childhood competence has shifted much of the responsibility for child protection and security from parents and society to children themselves.

If we ask for more and more material for the construction, i.e. more and more choice, we're likely to end up with a lot of combinations that don't do much for us or are far more complex than they need to be.

Reincarnation, at least as I conceive it, does not nullify what we know about evolution and genetics. It suggests, however, that there may be two streams of evolution -- the biological one and a personal one -- and that during terrestrial lives these streams may interact.

Psychological wealth includes life satisfaction, the feeling that life is full of meaning, a sense of engagement in interesting activities, the pursuit of important goals, the experience of positive emotional feelings, and a sense of spirituality that connects people to things larger than themselves.

Your typical Six-year-old is a paradoxical little person, and bipolarity is the name of his game

Louise Bates Ames

The problem of individual differences and group differences would not be made to disappear by abolishing tests. One cannot treat a fever by throwing away the thermometer.

Your real life is in the here and now. Once you figure out what kinds of experiences cause you to feel certain ways, you can change either the experiences, or when that's not possible, change your responses to them.

G. Alan Marlatt

It obviously makes a difference whether we consider ourselves as pawns in a game whose rules we call reality or as players of the game who know that the rules are 'real' only to the extent that we have created or accepted them, and that we can change them.

Paul Watzlawick

Loving a baby or child is a circular business, a kind of feedback loop. The more you give, the more you get, the more you get, the more you feel like giving.

Leadership is a group project, and all of us are necessary to fill it. Wise leaders will realize this and encourage their groups to develop their own evolving leadership potential.

It is common to think of statistical graphics and data visualization as relatively modern developments in statistics. In fact, the graphic representation of quantitative information has deep roots. These roots reach into the histories of the earliest map-making and visual depiction, and later into thematic cartography, statistics and statistical graphics, medicine, and other fields. Along the way, developments in technologies (printing, reproduction) mathematical theory and practice, and empirical observation and recording, enabled the wider use of graphics and new advances in form and content.

Michael Friendly

A paradox arises: the only way to meaning in freedom is through boundaries. The only way that boundaries make any sense at all is through freedom.

Clark Moustakas

During the past three decades numerous empirical studies of economic behavior have been carried out and their theoretical foundation has been clarified. There was a rapid development and articulation of data, theory, and methodology. A new discipline of behavioral economics was emerging [which] consists of the empirical investigations of the behavior of businessmen and consumers in one country in one time. Generalizations about economic behavior emerge gradually by comparing behavior observed under different circumstances.

No guarantees come with children's liberation. But neither the promise of great benefits to all nor the prediction of great difficulties ahead can serve as the reason for granting or denying rights to children. Rights will be granted because without them children are incapacitated, oppressed, and abused.

When we do cross paths with people whose beliefs and attitudes conflict with our own, we are rarely challenged.

Thomas Gilovich