Psychologist Quotes

For twenty years, my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value.

When a depressed person shrinks away from your touch it does not mean he is rejecting you. Rather he is protecting you from the foul, destructive evil which he believes is the essence of his being and which he believes can injure you.

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

If we went into stores only when we needed to buy something, and if once there we bought only what we needed, the economy would collapse, boom.

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

Learning is most often considered. a process of getting rather than giving. This is most evident in conceptions of student/teacher roles: Teachers give and students get. Yet, in adult learning both giving and getting are critical.

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.

There is no single best kind of death. A good death is one that is "appropriate" for that person. It is a death in which the hand of the way of dying slips easily into the glove of the act itself. It is in character, ego-syntonic. It, the death, fits the person. It is a death that one might choose if it were realistically possible for one to choose one's own death.

Edwin S. Shneidman

For the sensory thinker, the world of the mind bears a direct physical resemblance to the world outside.

One of the most powerful wellsprings of creative energy, outstanding accomplishment, and self-fulfillment seems to be falling in love with something - your dreams, your image of the future.

Ellis Paul Torrance

Honest, open communication is the only street that leads us into the real world... We then begin to grow as never before. And once we are on this road, happiness cannot be far away.

John Powell (Jesuit)

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

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.

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.

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

I have found that fate is as liquid and elusive a word as love. Plato thought they were the same... Novalis wrote that fate and soul are two names for the same principle.

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

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

In going beyond what is already known, one cannot but go blindly. If one can go wisely, this indicates already achieved wisdom of some general sort.

Donald T. Campbell

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.

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.

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

It is evident, therefore, that one of the most fundamental problems of psychology is that of investigating the laws of mental growth. When these laws are known, the door of the future will in a measure be opened; determination of the child's present status will enable us to forecast what manner of adult he will become.

Any theory intended to describe and analyze socio-historical reality cannot restrict itself to the human spirit and disregard the totality of human nature.

Wilhelm Dilthey