If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying. But no man can tell another what this purpose is.
GORDON ALLPORTWe cannot know the young child’s personality by studying his systems of interest, for his attention is as yet too labile, his reactions impulsive, and interests unformed.
More Gordon Allport Quotes
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Love-incomparably the greatest psychotherapeutic agent-is something that professional psychiatry cannot of itself create, focus, nor release.
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Thwarted lives have the most character-conditioned hate
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And sometimes no amount of punishment can make us repudiate our loyalty.
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We cannot know the young child’s personality by studying his systems of interest, for his attention is as yet too labile, his reactions impulsive, and interests unformed.
GORDON ALLPORT -
Reason adapts impulses and beliefs into the real world; rationalization, on the other hand, adapts the concept of reality to the impulses and beliefs of the individual.
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Each must find out for himself, and must accept the responsibility that his answer prescribes. If he succeeds he will continue to grow in spite of all indignities.
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It is not that we have class prejudice, but only that we find comfort and ease in our own class. And normally there are plenty of people of our own class, or race, or religion to play, live, and eat with, and to marry.
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There is a story of an Oxford student who once remarked, “I despise all Americans, but have never met one I didn’t like.”
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From adolescence onward, however, the surest clue to personality is the hierarchy of interests, including the loves and loyalties of adult life.
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As partisans of our own way of life, we cannot help thinking in a partisan manner.
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Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.
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People who are aware of, and ashamed of, their prejudices are well on the road to eliminating them.
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But there are innumerable instances in human life where a single association, never reinforced, results in the establishment of a life-long dynamic system.
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The theist is persuaded that while nothing that contradicts science is likely to be true, still nothing that stops with science can be the whole truth.
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The dog [in Pavlov’s experiments] does not continue to salivate whenever it hears a bell unless sometimes at least an edible offering accompanies the bell.
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Personality is and does something…It is what lies behind specific acts and within the individual
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[As] Santayana wrote, ‘Nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness to see one’s equation written out.’
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A good parent, a good neighbour, a good citizen, is not good because his specific goals are acceptable, but because his successive goals are ordered to a dependable and socially desirable set of values. (1947)
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It takes a major unhappiness, a prolonged and bitter experience, to drive us away from loyalties once formed.
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Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are not reversible when exposed to new knowledge.
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The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer.
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A new experience must be redacted into old categories. We cannot handle each event freshly in its own right. If we did so, of what use would past experience be?
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Open-mindedness is considered to be a virtue. But, strictly speaking, it cannot occur.
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The specific goals we set for ourselves are almost always subsidiary to our long range intentions.
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Life is too short so we must generalize.
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The mature religious sentiment is ordinarily fashioned in the workshop of doubt.
GORDON ALLPORT