“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.”

And sometimes no amount of punishment can make us repudiate our loyalty.

But there are innumerable instances in human life where a single association, never reinforced, results in the establishment of a life-long dynamic system.

If a person is capable of rectifying his erroneous judgments in the light of new evidence he is not prejudiced.

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.

Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.

Thwarted lives have the most character-conditioned hate

Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are reversible when exposed to new knowledge.

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?

Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and “patriotism” . . .

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.

Each person is an idiom unto himself, an apparent violation of the syntax of the species.

Reasoning discovers the true cause of our acts, rationalization finds good reasons for justifying our acts.

The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer.

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.

An experience associated only once with a bereavement, an accident, or a battle, may become the center of a permanent phobia or complex, not in the least dependent on a recurrence of the original shock.

It takes a major unhappiness, a prolonged and bitter experience, to drive us away from loyalties once formed.

I was working in a church in Florida as a youth intern, which means I really didn’t do much other than staple stuff.

Real obstacles don’t take you in circles. They can be overcome. Invented ones are like a maze.

And there was a real shedding of the old dogma, like boundaries of morality were being broken down and everybody was into the new party mode of just loving on each other. Which destroyed thousands of us. I lost 16 of my personal friends through that lifestyle.

We need to find the courage to say no to the things and people that are not serving us if we want to rediscover ourselves and live our lives with authenticity.

Your memories are eroding away. The futures you anticipate, will mostly not come to pass, and the real richness is in the moment. And it’s not necessarily some kind of ‘Be Here Now’ feel-good thing because it doesn’t always feel good. But it always feels. It is a domain of feeling. It’s primary.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.

If the ministers of the Church have often permitted nations to revolt for Heaven’s cause, they never allowed them to revolt against real evils or known violencess. It is from Heaven that the chains have come to fetter the minds of mortals.

There is no way to have a real relationship without becoming vulnerable to hurt. Christmas tells us that God became breakable and fragile.