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 ALLPORTFrom adolescence onward, however, the surest clue to personality is the hierarchy of interests, including the loves and loyalties of adult life.
More Gordon Allport Quotes
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Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are reversible when exposed to new knowledge.
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The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer.
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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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As partisans of our own way of life, we cannot help thinking in a partisan manner.
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Love received and love given comprise the best form of therapy.
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Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and “patriotism” . . .
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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.
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.
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Thwarted lives have the most character-conditioned hate
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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.
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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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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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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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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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Love-incomparably the greatest psychotherapeutic agent-is something that professional psychiatry cannot of itself create, focus, nor release.
GORDON ALLPORT