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William James15 quotes
An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible. — William James · 1890We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar... Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. — William James · 1890Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found? — William James · 1896Some people are far more sensitive to resemblances, and far more ready to point out wherein they consist, than others are. They are the wits, the poets, the inventors, the scientific men, the practical geniuses. — William James · 1890A genuine first-hand religious experience... Is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn. — William James · 1902Habit is... The enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance. — William James · 1890All 15 quotes →
Carl Jung12 quotes
You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return. — Carl Jung · 1958Every civilized human being, whatever his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche. — Carl Jung · 1933The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. — Carl Jung · 1933Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. — Carl Jung · 1921People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. — Carl Jung · 1944Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other. — Carl Jung · 1912All 12 quotes →
We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts. — Sigmund Freud · 1917The ego's relation to the id might be compared with that of a rider to his horse. The horse supplies the locomotive energy, while the rider has the privilege of deciding on the goal and of guiding and powerful animal's movement. But only too often there arises between the ego and the id the not precisely ideal situation of the rider being obliged to guide the horse along the path by which it itself wants to go. — Sigmund Freud · 1933The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind. — Sigmund Freud · 1899If a man has been his mother's undisputed darling he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings actual success with it. — Sigmund Freud · 1917Religion is illusion, and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires. — Sigmund Freud · 1933
If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail. — Abraham Maslow · 1966Growth was seen as an endless series of daily choices and decisions in each of which one can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again. — Abraham Maslow · 1966
Erich Fromm2 quotes
Freedom, though it has brought him independence and rationality, has made him isolated and, thereby, anxious and powerless. — Erich Fromm · 1941Man's nature, his passions and anxieties, are a cultural product; as a matter of fact, man himself is the most important creation and achievement of the continuous human effort, the record of which we call history. — Erich Fromm · 1941
The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even murder with truth. — Alfred Adler · 1929
Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do. — Benjamin Spock · 1946
Punishment may make us obey the orders we are given, but at best it will only teach an obedience to authority, not a self-control which enhances our self-respect. — Bruno Bettelheim · 1987
The pain of grief is just as much a part of life as the joy of love; it is, perhaps, the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment. — Colin Murray Parkes · 1972
Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it. — Daniel Kahneman · 2011
Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select-doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. — John B. Watson · 1924
Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist. — Karen Horney · 1945
As the traveller who has been once from home is wiser than he who has never left his own door step, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinise more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own. — Margaret Mead · 1928