Psychological Quotes - Page 30

• Advertising is the modern substitute for argument, its function is to make the worse appear the better article. A confused competition of all propagandas -- those insults to human nature -- is carried on by the most expert psychological methods -- for instance, by always repeating a lie.

  George Santayana

  Confused, Lying, Competition

  George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana”

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• The most that can be said of flattery is that it is sometimes a cheap psychological trick with which charlatans and dishonest people lull others into a state of carelessness while they pick their pockets.

  Napoleon Hill

  People, Pockets, Flattery

  Napoleon Hill (2009). “How To Sell Your Way Through Life”, p.20, John Wiley and Sons

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• The suppression of natural sexual gratification leads to various kinds of substitute gratifications. Natural aggression, for example, becomes brutal sadism which then is an essential mass-psychological factor in imperialistic wars.

  Wilhelm Reich

  War, Sadism, Essentials

  "The Mass Psychology of Fascism". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1933.

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• There is no value-judgment more important to a man--no factor more decisive in his psychological development and motivation--than the estimate he passes on himself.

  Nathaniel Branden

  Confidence, Motivation, Men

  Nathaniel Branden (2001). “The Psychology of Self-Esteem: A Revolutionary Approach to Self-Understanding that Launched a New Era in Modern Psychology”, Jossey-Bass

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• One can't write a weird story of real power without perfect psychological detachment from the human scene, and a magic prism of imagination which suffuses them and style alike with that grotesquerie and disquieting distortion characteristic of morbid vision. Only a cynic can create horror - for behind every masterpiece of the sort must reside a driving daemonic force that despises the human race and its illusions, and longs to pull them to pieces and mock them.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Real, Writing, Race

  Letter to "Weird Tales" editor Edwin Baird, printed in "Weird Tales" 3, no. 3 (March 1924); Quoted in "Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters" edited by S. T. Joshi, (p. 122), 2000.

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• The technological landscape of the present day has enfranchised its own electorates - the inhabitants of the marketing zones in the consumer society, television audiences and news magazine readerships, who vote with money at the cash counter rather than with ballot paper at the polling boot. These huge and passive electorates are wide open to any opportunist using the psychological weaponry of fear and anxiety, elements that are carefully blanched out of the world of domestic products and consumer software.

  J. G. Ballard

  Anxiety, Marketing, News

  "A User's Guide to the Millennium". Book by J. G. Ballard, 1996.

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• Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. If one could follow it to its psychological roots, one would, I believe, find that the main motive for "non-attachment" is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work.

  George Orwell

  Pain, Believe, Hard Work

  George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “Our job is to make life worth living, 1949-1950”, Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd

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• I am convinced that there is no sort of boundary between the living and the mental or between the biological and the psychological. From the moment an organism takes account of a previous experience and adapts to a new situation, that very much resembles psychology.

  Jean Piaget

  Psychology, Moments, Boundaries

  Jean-Claude Bringuier, Jean Piaget (1989). “Conversations with Jean Piaget”, p.3, University of Chicago Press

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• The landscape, like Los Angeles itself, is transitional. Impermanence haunts the city, with its mushroom industries--the aircraft perpetually becoming obsolete, the oil which must one day be exhausted, the movies which fill America's theatres for six months and are forgotten. Many of its houses--especially the grander ones--have a curiously disturbing atmosphere, a kind of psychological dankness which smells of anxiety, overdrafts, uneasy lust, whisky, divorce and lies.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Lying, Divorce, Cities

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• Obedience is the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose. It is the dispositional cement that binds men to systems of authority.

  Stanley Milgram

  Men, Political, Purpose

  Stanley Milgram (2017). “Obedience to Authority”, p.1, HarperCollins

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• When one read's Kierkegaard's profound analyses of anxiety and despair or Nietzsche's amazingly acute insights into the dynamics of resentment and the guilt and hostility which accompany repressed emotional powers, one might pinch oneself to realize that one is reading works written in the last century and not some new contemporary psychological analysis.

  Rollo May

  Reading, Emotional, Profound

  Rollo May (2015). “The Discovery of Being”, p.53, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It may sound surprising when I say, on the basis of my own clinical practice as well as that of my psychological and psychiatric colleagues, that the chief problem of people in the middle decade of the twentieth century is emptiness.

  Rollo May

  Practice, People, May

  Rollo May Ph.D. (1953). “Man's Search for Himself”

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• Don't you feel something magical when you're in love?... I do, I certainly do ... but I think that feeling of magic is a hardwired psychological response. It's a chemical thing in the brain. It's a flow of chemicals and electrical currents, and it developed over millions of years in the process of evolution to aid in the procreation of the species.

  Alan Lightman

  Thinking, Years, Feelings

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• Although our grammar schools are teaching a whole generation computer language to adjust to the technological needs of a Stage II [post survival-focused] society, we have neglected to teach this generation relationship language and conflict resolution skills to address the social and psychological needs of a Stage II society. And when it is taught, in countries like Germany, although called social competence it focuses on workplace teamwork - still on survival, breadwinner oriented work goals.

  Warren Farrell

  Teamwork, Country, Teaching

  "Father and Child Reunion". Book by Warren Farrell, 2001.

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• When a parent denies a child its parent time, that parent is denying the child its child support - its psychological child support.

  Warren Farrell

  Children, Support, Parent

  "Father and Child Reunion". Book by Warren Farrell, 2001.

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• Although the drama of games of strategy is strongly linked with the psychological aspects of the conflict, game theory is not concerned with these aspects. Game theory, so to speak, plays the board. It is concerned only with the logical aspects of strategy.

  Anatol Rapoport

  Drama, Games, Play

  "The Use and Misuse of Game Theory". Scientific American, (p. 110), December 1962.

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• It is curious how an age of public self-revelation, and of the use of psychological jargon, should also be an age when self-examination is rarely practised.

  Anthony Daniels

  Self, Age, Use

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• Having analyzed these traits, we can now advance a definition of propaganda - not an exhaustive definition, unique and exclusive of all others, but at least a partial one: Propaganda is a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulations and incorporated in an organization.

  Jacques Ellul

  Unique, Organization, Definitions

  "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes". Book by Jacques Ellul, translated by Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner,, 1965.

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• The gun becomes this psychological totem, this thing of who I am. And it's almost as if using the gun is going to be the thing that's going to be my expression of how I make a difference in the world.

  David Brooks

  Gun, Who I Am, Expression

  "Meet the Press" with Chuck Todd, www.nbcnews.com. June 21, 2015.

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• When it comes to politics, we have an internal glass ceiling. We stand as good a chance as a man to win a political race, but women don't want to run at the same rate as men do. People point to the work-family balance issue, but I think it's much more than that. Many women don't have children, or have children who are no longer at home. There are some deeper psychological and emotional issues in play, like the fact that many of us feel like the embarrassment, humiliation and personal demonization in politics are simply more than our hearts can take. What stops us is fear.

  Marianne Williamson

  Running, Children, Heart

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Failure to handle psychological denial is a common way for people to go broke: you have made an enormous commitment to something. You have poured effort and money in. And the more you put in, the more that the whole consistency principle makes you think, "Now it has to work. If I put in just a little more, then it will work."

  Charlie Munger

  Commitment, Thinking, People

  "Business: What Lawyers Should Know". Charlie Munger's lecture to the students at the Stanford Law School in Stanford, California, March 13, 1998.

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• When I was in school, I was beaten every 30 minutes. It never did me any harm except for some psychological mal-adjustments and blurred vision.

  John Cleese

  School, Vision, Minutes

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• Love is always mutual and reflective. You may hate me, and if I want to love you, you repulse me. But if I persist, in a month or a year you are bound to love me. It is a well-known psychological phenomenon.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Hate, Love You, Love Is

  Swami Vivekananda (2017). “Vedanta: Voice of Freedom”, p.295, Vedanta Society of St. Louis

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• The shaman is a very peculiar figure. He is critical to the functioning of the psychological and social life of his community, but in a way he is always peripheral to it. He lives at the edge of the village. He is only called upon in matters of great social crisis. He is feared and respected. And this might be a description of these hallucinogenic substances.

  Terence McKenna

  Community, Peculiar, Substance

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• There's a different kind of comfort that comes from knowing that you are putting your best foot forward. It's called psychological comfort. Look at a picture of the Coney Island boardwalk in 1925. Men were in full-on three-piece suits, hats. They may have only had one suit. But they pressed it. They made it look as good as possible.

  Tom Ford

  Men, Feet, Knowing

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