Psychology Quotes – Insights and Reflections

"I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding; they learn by some other way - by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!"

Richard P. Feynman

"We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter."

Denis Diderot

"In his important social psychological experiments with students, Asch found out in simple tests that there was a yielding toward an ERRING MAJORITY opinion in more than a third of his test persons, and 75 percent of subjects experimented upon agreed with the majority in varying degrees. In many persons the weight of authority is more important than the quality of the authority."

Joost A.M. Meerloo

"The fear of freedom is the fear of assuming responsibility."

Joost A.M. Meerloo

"People can play many roles and be subjectively convinced that each one is their true self. In reality, however, they play each role based on their own ideas of what those around them expect of them. And for many people—if not most—the true personality is completely overshadowed by the false one."

Erich Fromm

"The illusion that one has understood the past feeds the further illusion that one can predict and control the future. These illusions are comforting. They reduce the anxiety that we would experience if we allowed ourselves to fully acknowledge the uncertainties of existence. We all have a need for the reassuring message that actions have appropriate consequences, and that success will reward wisdom and courage. Many business books are tailor-made to satisfy this need."

Daniel Kahneman

"The Pavlovian strategy in public relations has people conditioned more and more to ask themselves, "What do other people think?" As a result, a common delusion is created: people are incited to think what other people think, and thus public opinion may mushroom out into a mass prejudice. Expressed in psychoanalytic terms, through daily propagandistic noise backed up by forceful verbal cues, people can more and more be forced to identify with the powerful noisemaker. Big brother's voice resounds in all the little brothers."

Joost A.M. Meerloo

"When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre."

Henry Louis Mencken

"Is any of it real? I mean, look at this, look at it! A world built on fantasy! Synthetic emotions in the form of pills! Psychological warfare in the form of advertising! Mind altering chemicals in the form of food! Brainwashing seminars in the form of media! Controlled isolated bubbles in the form of social networks. Real? You want to talk about reality? We haven't lived in anything remotely close to it since the turn of the century! We turned it off, took out the batteries, snacked on a bag of GMOs, while we tossed the remnants into the ever expanding dumpster of the human condition. We live in branded houses, trademarked by corporations, built on bipolar numbers, jumping up and down on digital displays, hypnotizing us into the biggest slumber mankind has ever seen. You'd have to dig pretty deep, kiddo, before you can find anything real. We live in a kingdom of bullshit, that even you have lived in for far too long. So don't tell me about not being real: I'm no less real than the fucking beef patty in your big mac. As far as you are concerned, Elliot, I am very real. We are all together now, whether you like it or not."

Christian Slater

"Evil cannot create anything new; it can only corrupt and destroy what good forces have invented or created."

J.R.R. Tolkien

"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are."

Henry Louis Mencken

"The people in the public relations industry aren’t there for the fun of it. They’re doing work. They’re trying to instill the right values. In fact, they have a conception of what democracy ought to be: It ought to be a system in which the specialized class is trained to work in the service of the masters, the people who own the society. The rest of the population ought to be deprived of any form of organization, because organization just causes trouble. They ought to be sitting alone in front of the TV and having drilled into their heads the message, which says, the only value in life is to have more commodities or live like that rich middle class family you’re watching and to have nice values like harmony and Americanism. That’s all there is in life. You may think in your own head that there’s got to be something more in life than this, but since you’re watching the tube alone you assume, I must be crazy …"

Noam Chomsky

"Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective. So the only way he figures that he’s going to get re-elected, and as sure as you’re sitting there, is to start a war with Iran."

Donald Trump

"Ideally, every child throughout their entire schooling should be repeatedly told: "You are being indoctrinated. We have yet to develop an education system that is not an indoctrination system. We are sorry, but this is the best we can do. What is taught here is a mixture of common prejudices and the decisions of this particular culture. The slightest glance at history shows how unstable these must be. You are taught by people who were able to fit into a thought pattern set by their predecessors. It is a self-sustaining system. Those among you who are more robust and individual than others are encouraged to leave the classroom and find ways to educate yourselves – to form your own judgments. Those who stay must constantly remember that they are being shaped and patterned to fit the narrow and special needs of this particular society.""

Doris Lessing

"Until they become conscious, they will never rebel, and until they rebel, they cannot become conscious."

George Orwell

"In the school system, they don’t want us to learn about money, because they just want to pump out good employees that do what they’re told. If you look at school, it’s opposite of what it takes to be successful. In real life: ‘don’t make a mistake’, ‘do as you’re told’, ‘take tests by yourself’, ‘don’t cooperate’, ‘do it by yourself’, ‘do it alone’, ‘there’s only one right answer’… No, there’s tons of answers to a problem. So you come out of school scared to death of making a mistake, you do everything on your own, you don’t cooperate, there’s no synergy, there’s no brainstorming. So I think, people come out of school paralyzed. I think the school system is criminal in that it kills a child’s spirit of learning. A child goes into school all excited, ‘Oh, I’m gonna learn and it’s gonna be great’, and then, the teacher says ‘Sit down and shut up, don’t talk, we don’t care what you’re interested in’"

Kim Kiyosaki

"Now, my predecessor loved precision. His matrix consisted only of pedantic facts and equations. He hated the human mind. So he never bothered to understand that you don’t give a damn about facts. It’s all about fiction. The only world that matters is the one inside here. And you people believe the craziest shit. And why? What confirms your fictions and makes them real? Feelings."

Neil Patrick Harris

"When you’re happy, you enjoy the music, but when you’re sad, you understand the lyrics."

Frank Ocean