“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.”

From adolescence onward, however, the surest clue to personality is the hierarchy of interests, including the loves and loyalties of adult life.

There is a story of an Oxford student who once remarked, “I despise all Americans, but have never met one I didn’t like.”

The mature religious sentiment is ordinarily fashioned in the workshop of doubt.

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.

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)

As partisans of our own way of life, we cannot help thinking in a partisan manner.

And sometimes no amount of punishment can make us repudiate our loyalty.

But there are innumerable instances in human life where a single association, never reinforced, results in the establishment of a life-long dynamic system.

If a person is capable of rectifying his erroneous judgments in the light of new evidence he is not prejudiced.

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.

Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.

Thwarted lives have the most character-conditioned hate

Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are reversible when exposed to new knowledge.

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.

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?

Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and “patriotism” . . .

You possess other people’s…Bodies.”he accepted that statement with a nod.”do you want to possess my body?i want to do a lot of things to your body, but that’s not one of them.

The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.

I think that’s what happened to the record business when ‘Napster’ came around. The industry rejected what was happening instead of accepting it as change.

Fascism accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with the state’s.

I always hate it when I see the wrong person in massive roles, so for me, my biggest fear would be accepting a role I thought I wouldn’t find the rhythm of.

Now it is a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. If you utterly decline to make do with what you can get, then somehow or other, you are very likely to get what you want.

If you want democracy, you have got to be prepared to accept the responsibilities of democracy.

It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.