[As] Santayana wrote, ‘Nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness to see one’s equation written out.’
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.
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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Each person is an idiom unto himself, an apparent violation of the syntax of the species.
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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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There is a story of an Oxford student who once remarked, “I despise all Americans, but have never met one I didn’t like.”
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The specific goals we set for ourselves are almost always subsidiary to our long range intentions.
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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.
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And sometimes no amount of punishment can make us repudiate our loyalty.
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Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are reversible when exposed to new knowledge.
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Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and “patriotism” . . .
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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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People who are aware of, and ashamed of, their prejudices are well on the road to eliminating them.
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Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are not reversible when exposed to new knowledge.
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Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots.
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Thwarted lives have the most character-conditioned hate
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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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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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As partisans of our own way of life, we cannot help thinking in a partisan manner.
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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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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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But there are innumerable instances in human life where a single association, never reinforced, results in the establishment of a life-long dynamic system.
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Open-mindedness is considered to be a virtue. But, strictly speaking, it cannot occur.
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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 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)
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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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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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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