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 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.
More Gordon Allport Quotes
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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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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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Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and “patriotism” . . .
GORDON ALLPORT -
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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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.
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Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are reversible when exposed to new knowledge.
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Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.
GORDON ALLPORT -
Life is too short so we must generalize.
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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?
GORDON ALLPORT -
Love received and love given comprise the best form of therapy.
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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 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.
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The mature religious sentiment is ordinarily fashioned in the workshop of doubt.
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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.
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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.
GORDON ALLPORT