Psychologist Quotes

Sigmund Freud

John Dewey

William James

Jean Piaget

Tomas Tranströmer

Alfred Binet

B. F. Skinner

In this way the ego detaches itself from the external world. It is more correct to say: Originally the ego includes everything, later it detaches from itself the external world. The ego-feeling we are aware of now is thus only a shrunken vestige of a far more extensive feeling - a feeling which embraced the universe and expressed an inseparable connection of the ego with the external world.

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

Some adolescents are troubled and some get into trouble. But the great majority (almost nine out of ten) do not.... The bottomline is that good kids don't suddenly go bad in adolescence.

Laurence Steinberg

In the years ahead of me, I learned that the world is actually filled with people ready to tell you how likely something is, and what it means to be realistic. But what I have also learned is that no one, no one truly knows what is possible until they go and do it.

A cognitive architecture specifies aspects of an intelligent system that are stable over time, much as in a building's architecture. These include the memories that store perceptions, beliefs, and knowledge, the representation of elements that are contained in these memories, the performance mechanisms that use them, and the learning processes that build on them. Such a framework typically comes with a programming language and software environment that supports the efficient construction of knowledge-based systems.

Parents who discipline their child by discussing the consequences of their actions produce children who have better moral development, compared to children whose parents use authoritarian methods and punishment.

Simon Baron-Cohen

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

Change does not fail to occur because of insincerity. The heart patient is not insincere about his wish to keep living, even as he reaches for another cigarette. Change fails to occur because we mean both things. It fails to occur because we are a living contradiction.

The American mind in particular has been trained to equate success with victory, to equate doing well with beating someone.

Beauty reveals itself in the course of an experience with an object.

People fall in love more easily when they are already troubled by another emotion because we know that any intense emotional state greatly increases the risk of falling in love.

François Lelord

Universities are renowned for their tolerance of unusual characters, especially if they show originality and dedication to their research. I have often made the comment that not only are universities a 'cathedral' for worship of knowledge, they are also 'sheltered workshops' for the socially challenged.

Once you become aware of what means the most to you, you're less likely to put off something that's really valuable for something that matters much less... it's knowing the difference between what's important and what isn't that allows us to solve problems effectively.

The intelligence of the lower forms of animal life, like a great deal of human intelligence, does not involve a self.

George Herbert Mead

We should be on our guard against the temptation to argue directly from skill to capacity, and to assume when a man displays skill in some feat, his capacity is therefore considerable.

Tom Hatherley Pear

Life is at its best when
love, money, and creativity
are growing in harmony.

We hear a lot of talk these days about teaching values in higher education. Frankly, I am not sure this can be accomplished through a separate course in morality or ethics. I am convinced, however, that values are sustained on campus by the honesty of our words, and by the confidence we have in the words of others.

Ernest L. Boyer

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

Richard Miller (psychologist)

Attainment is a poor measure of capacity, and ignorance no proof of defect.

It is probable that one day we shall begin to draw organization charts as a series of linked groups rather than as a hierarchical structure of individual "reporting" relationships.

Douglas McGregor

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.

The best answer to the question, 'What is the most effective method of teaching?' is that it depends on the goal, the student, the content, and the teacher. But the next best answer is, 'Students teaching other students.'

Wilbert J. McKeachie

The protected place in space and time that we once called childhood has grown shorter.

We cling to hierarchies because our place in a hierarchy is, rightly or wrongly, a major indicator of our social worth.