But there are innumerable instances in human life where a single association, never reinforced, results in the establishment of a life-long dynamic system.
GORDON ALLPORTThe outlines of the needed psychology of becoming can be discovered by looking within ourselves; for it is knowledge of our own uniqueness that supplies the first, and probably the best, hints for acquiring orderly knowledge of others.
More Gordon Allport Quotes
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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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Life is too short so we must generalize.
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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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Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots.
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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.
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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.
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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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Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.
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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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Love-incomparably the greatest psychotherapeutic agent-is something that professional psychiatry cannot of itself create, focus, nor release.
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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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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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Personality is and does something…It is what lies behind specific acts and within the individual
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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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Love received and love given comprise the best form of therapy.
GORDON ALLPORT






