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.
GORDON ALLPORTIf 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.
More Gordon Allport Quotes
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The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer.
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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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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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If a person is capable of rectifying his erroneous judgments in the light of new evidence he is not prejudiced.
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Life is too short so we must generalize.
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Open-mindedness is considered to be a virtue. But, strictly speaking, it cannot occur.
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Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.
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Thwarted lives have the most character-conditioned hate
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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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People who are aware of, and ashamed of, their prejudices are well on the road to eliminating them.
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The specific goals we set for ourselves are almost always subsidiary to our long range intentions.
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Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are not reversible when exposed to new knowledge.
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Each person is an idiom unto himself, an apparent violation of the syntax of the species.
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Since we think about ourselves so much of the time, it is comforting to assume … that we really know the score…. [But] this is not an easy assignment.
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The 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.
GORDON ALLPORT