[As] Santayana wrote, ‘Nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness to see one’s equation written out.’
GORDON ALLPORTIndeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better problems.
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 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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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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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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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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Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.
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Personality is and does something…It is what lies behind specific acts and within the individual
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Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are not 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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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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Reasoning discovers the true cause of our acts, rationalization finds good reasons for justifying our acts.
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Each person is an idiom unto himself, an apparent violation of the syntax of the species.
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And sometimes no amount of punishment can make us repudiate our loyalty.
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Each must find out for himself, and must accept the responsibility that his answer prescribes. If he succeeds he will continue to grow in spite of all indignities.
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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.
GORDON ALLPORT