Reasoning discovers the true cause of our acts, rationalization finds good reasons for justifying our acts.
GORDON ALLPORTReasoning discovers the true cause of our acts, rationalization finds good reasons for justifying our acts.
GORDON ALLPORTGiven a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.
GORDON ALLPORTSince 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 ALLPORTThe scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer.
GORDON ALLPORTAn 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.
GORDON ALLPORTReason 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 ALLPORTLove-incomparably the greatest psychotherapeutic agent-is something that professional psychiatry cannot of itself create, focus, nor release.
GORDON ALLPORTA 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 ALLPORTThe 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 ALLPORTFrom adolescence onward, however, the surest clue to personality is the hierarchy of interests, including the loves and loyalties of adult life.
GORDON ALLPORTPrejudgments become prejudices only if they are reversible when exposed to new knowledge.
GORDON ALLPORTPeople who are aware of, and ashamed of, their prejudices are well on the road to eliminating them.
GORDON ALLPORTAnd sometimes no amount of punishment can make us repudiate our loyalty.
GORDON ALLPORTIf a person is capable of rectifying his erroneous judgments in the light of new evidence he is not prejudiced.
GORDON ALLPORTLove received and love given comprise the best form of therapy.
GORDON ALLPORTThe 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.
GORDON ALLPORT