American Psychologist Quotes

John Dewey

William James

B. F. Skinner

Abraham Maslow

Steven Pinker

John B. Watson

Carl Rogers

Millions of people have wrecked their lives in angry turmoil, because they refused to accept the worst; refused to try to improve upon it; refused to salvage what they could from the wreck. Instead of trying to reconstruct their fortunes, they engaged in a bitter and "violent contest with experience"- and ended up victims of that brooding fixation known as melancholia.

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

Temporary feelings of regret are a normal part of the mourning process. This helps us retrieve our lost dreams. If we hold on to regret, we risk trapping ourselves in a prison of unrealized dreams from which it is difficult to escape.

Barbara De Angelis

Most social acts have to be understood in their setting, and lose meaning if isolated. No error in thinking about social facts is more serious than the failure to see their place and function.

Mass production is only profitable if its rhythm can be maintained.. that is, if it can continue to sell its product in steady or increasing quantity. The result is that while, under the handicraft or small-unit system of production that was typical a century ago, demand created the supply, today supply must actively seek to create its corresponding demand.

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.

Self-respecting men and women think about the consequences of their actions-and are willing to take responsibility for them.

Nathaniel Branden

Scientists still know less about what attracts men than they do about what attracts mosquitoes.

Perfection is crucial in building an aircraft, a bridge, or a high-speed train. The code and mathematics residing just below the surface of the Internet is also this way. Things are either perfectly right or they will not work. So much of the world we work and live in is based upon being correct, being perfect.

Sociologists and historians have avoided looking for the family sources of wars and social violence. Whenever a group produces murderers, the early parental relationship must have been abusive and neglectful. Yet this elementary truth has not even begun to be considered in historical research; just stating that poor mothering lies behind wars seems blasphemous.

Some things which are remote in space and time from a living creature, especially a human creature, may form his environment even more truly than some of the things close to him.

We human beings can survive the most difficult of circumstances if we are not forced to stand alone.

Prostitution is sexual violence that results in massive economic profit for some of its perpetrators. The sex industry, like other global enterprises, has domestic and international sectors, marketing sectors, a range of physical locations out of which it operates in each community, is controlled by many different owners and managers, and is constantly expanding as technology, law, and public opinion permit.

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

Sexual conduct is learned, acquired and assembled in human interaction, judged and performed in specific cultural and historical worlds.

The names that do the serious damage are the ones we call ourselves. The stereotypes we give ourselves are the ones that matter in the long run, not the ones imposed on us by other people.

Judith Rich Harris

One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.

Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention... But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them.

Abstract words are ancient coins whose concrete images in the give and take of talk have worn away with use.

Followers do not like themselves, of course; that's why they crawl. And masters have nothing but contempt for their subservants, which is why they impose such colorful embarrassments upon them.

Social psychology is the scientific study of the obvious, which invariably leads to conflicting results.

In real life, as well as in experiments, people can come to believe things that never really happened.

Elizabeth Loftus

We are dealing with a fundamental characteristic, inherent in human nature, a potentiality given to all or most human beings at birth, which most often is lost or buried or inhibited as the person gets enculturated.

Perhaps the challenge is to invent the political structure that will give conscience a better chance against authority.

Stanley Milgram

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.