There is a story of an Oxford student who once remarked, “I despise all Americans, but have never met one I didn’t like.”
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
-
-
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)
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.
GORDON ALLPORT -
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 -
From adolescence onward, however, the surest clue to personality is the hierarchy of interests, including the loves and loyalties of adult life.
GORDON ALLPORT -
Personality is and does something…It is what lies behind specific acts and within the individual
GORDON ALLPORT -
Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are not reversible when exposed to new knowledge.
GORDON ALLPORT -
Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are reversible when exposed to new knowledge.
GORDON ALLPORT -
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.
GORDON ALLPORT -
Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.
GORDON ALLPORT -
People who are aware of, and ashamed of, their prejudices are well on the road to eliminating them.
GORDON ALLPORT -
Open-mindedness is considered to be a virtue. But, strictly speaking, it cannot occur.
GORDON ALLPORT -
And sometimes no amount of punishment can make us repudiate our loyalty.
GORDON ALLPORT -
Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and “patriotism” . . .
GORDON ALLPORT -
As partisans of our own way of life, we cannot help thinking in a partisan manner.
GORDON ALLPORT -
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 -
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 ALLPORT -
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.
GORDON ALLPORT -
The specific goals we set for ourselves are almost always subsidiary to our long range intentions.
GORDON ALLPORT -
Each person is an idiom unto himself, an apparent violation of the syntax of the species.
GORDON ALLPORT -
Love received and love given comprise the best form of therapy.
GORDON ALLPORT -
The mature religious sentiment is ordinarily fashioned in the workshop of doubt.
GORDON ALLPORT -
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?
GORDON ALLPORT -
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.
GORDON ALLPORT -
[As] Santayana wrote, ‘Nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness to see one’s equation written out.’
GORDON ALLPORT -
Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better problems.
GORDON ALLPORT -
Reasoning discovers the true cause of our acts, rationalization finds good reasons for justifying our acts.
GORDON ALLPORT