People think you have only to ‘tell’ a person that he ‘ought’ to do something in order to put him on the right track. But whether he can or will do it is another matter.

The transitoriness of our existence in now way makes it meaningless. But it does constitute our responsibleness; for everything hinges upon our realizing the essentially transitory possibilities.

A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of spirit over matter.

The American educational psychologist Patricia Alexander has expressed the view that fear paralyses and curiosity empowers. Accordingly, she reasons, we should always be more interested than afraid.

I think it was Lessing who once said, 'There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose'. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour".

If you fail to believe you will procrastinate or become idealustic about how awesome you are at working hard and managing your time, you never develop a strategy for outmaneuvering your own weakness.

But I know human nature, my friend, and I tell you that, suddenly confronted with the possibility of being tried for murder, the most innocent person will lose his head and do the most absurd things.

These were not people you could disagree with. If you disagreed, you were wrong."Juliet Hopkins, Tavistock Institute, as quoted in Relationships and how They Shape Our Capacity to Love By Robert Karen

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are -- or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms.

Unable to penetrate to the secret place of his soul where his motives lay hidden, he believed that a supernatural voice had called him onward, and that a supernatural power had obstructed his retreat.

Now if you are told that some piece of information will come as a shock to you, the chances are that you will really feel shocked, even if the information itself isn't of the slightest importance.

We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself.

What kills a person at twenty-five? Leukemia. An accident. But George knows the better odds are that someone who passes at that age dies of unhappiness. Drug overdose. Suicide. Reckless behavior.

In certain diseased conditions consciousness is a mere spark, without memory of the past or thought of the future, and with the present narrowed down to some one simple emotion or sensation of the body.

Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group.