Psychologist Quotes

Moral justification is a powerful disengagement mechanism. Destructive conduct is made personally and socially acceptable by portraying it in the service of moral ends. This is why most appeals against violent means usually fall on deaf ears.

Accomplishment is socially judged by ill defined criteria so that one has to rely on others to find out how one is doing.

Most of the images of reality on which we base our actions are really based on vicarious experience.

Coping with the demands of everyday life would be exceedingly trying if one could arrive at solutions to problems only by actually performing possible options and suffering the consequences.

People who believe they have the power to exercise some measure of control over their lives are healthier, more effective and more successful than those who lack faith in their ability to effect changes in their lives.

In order to succeed, people need a sense of self-efficacy, to struggle together with resilience to meet the inevitable obstacles and inequities of life.

So many tangles in life are ultimately hopeless that we have no appropriate sword other than laughter.

Every therapeutic cure, and still more, any awkward attempt to show the patient the truth, tears him from the cradle of his freedom from responsibility and must therefore reckon with the most vehement resistance.

The test of one's behavior pattern is their relationship to society, relationship to work and relationship to sex.

We cannot say that if a child is badly nourished he will become a criminal. We must see what conclusion the child has drawn.

Every individual acts and suffers in accordance with his peculiar teleology, which has all the inevitability of fate, so long as he does not understand it.

The neurotic is nailed to the cross of his fiction.

It is the patriotic duty of every man to lie for his country.

The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, with the truth.

Death is really a great blessing for humanity, without it there could be no real progress. People who lived for ever would not only hamper and discourage the young, but they would themselves lack sufficient stimulus to be creative.

There is a law that man should love his neighbor as himself. In a few hundred years it should be as natural to mankind as breathing or the upright gait; but if he does not learn it he must perish.

There is no such thing as talent. There is pressure.

The science of the mind can only have for its proper goal the understanding of human nature by every human being, and through its use, brings peace to every human soul.

In the investigation of a neurotic style of life, we must always suspect an opponent, and note who suffers most because of the patient's condition. Usually this is a member of the family.

We must interpret a bad temper as a sign of inferiority.

A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt dangerous.

The educator must believe in the potential power of his pupil, and he must employ all his art in seeking to bring his pupil to experience this power.

No experience is a cause of success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences, so-called trauma - but we make out of them just what suits our purposes.

Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority.

Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.

It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge to conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation.

To be a human being means to possess a feeling of inferiority which constantly presses towards its own conquest. The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge for conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation.

The only normal people are the one's you don't know very well.

God who is eternally complete, who directs the stars, who is the master of fates, who elevates man from his lowliness to Himself, who speaks from the cosmos to every single human soul, is the most brilliant manifestation of the goal of perfection.