Gordon Allport Quotes

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.
GORDON ALLPORT

Class Classic Comfort Ease Marry Normally People Plenty Prejudice
People who are aware of, and ashamed of, their prejudices are well on the road to eliminating them.
GORDON ALLPORT

Ashamed Eliminate People Prejudices Road Well
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.
GORDON ALLPORT

Accept Answer Continue Each Find Grow Indignity Must Out Prescribe Responsibility Spite Succeed
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

Answer Indeed Intellectual Maturity Measure Philosopher Problem Suggest
Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots.
GORDON ALLPORT

Almost Always Bigot Extremely Patriot Super
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

Assignment Assume Comfort Easy Know Much Ourselves Really Score Since Think Time
Love-incomparably the greatest psychotherapeutic agent-is something that professional psychiatry cannot of itself create, focus, nor release.
GORDON ALLPORT

Agent Create Focus Greatest Incomparably Love Profesional Psychiatry Psychotherapeutic Release Something
The specific goals we set for ourselves are almost always subsidiary to our long range intentions.
GORDON ALLPORT

Goal Intention Long Our Ourselves Range Specific Subsidiary
[As] Santayana wrote, ‘Nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness to see one’s equation written out.’
GORDON ALLPORT

Country Equation Heroism Intellectual Nothing Out People Wrote Rarer Require Willingness Written
Love received and love given comprise the best form of therapy.
GORDON ALLPORT

Best Comprise Form Give Love Receive Therapy
From adolescence onward, however, the surest clue to personality is the hierarchy of interests, including the loves and loyalties of adult life.
GORDON ALLPORT

Adolescence Adult However Include Life Love Loyalty Onward Personality Surets
There is a story of an Oxford student who once remarked, “I despise all Americans, but have never met one I didn’t like.”
GORDON ALLPORT

Country Despise Like never Once Remark Story Student
The mature religious sentiment is ordinarily fashioned in the workshop of doubt.
GORDON ALLPORT

Doubt Fashion Mature Ordinarily Religious Sentiment Workshop
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

Accomplish Bell Continue Dog Edible Experiment Hear Least Offer Salivate Sometimes Unless
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)
GORDON ALLPORT

Accept Citizen Desirable Set Goal Good Neighbour Parent Socially Specific Successive
As partisans of our own way of life, we cannot help thinking in a partisan manner.
GORDON ALLPORT

Help Life Manner Own Parisian Think Way
And sometimes no amount of punishment can make us repudiate our loyalty.
GORDON ALLPORT

Amount Loyalty Make No Punishment Repudiate Sometimes
But there are innumerable instances in human life where a single association, never reinforced, results in the establishment of a life-long dynamic system.
GORDON ALLPORT

Accident Association Center Dynamic Human Life Long Permanent System
If a person is capable of rectifying his erroneous judgments in the light of new evidence he is not prejudiced.
GORDON ALLPORT

Capable Erroneous Evidence Judgement Light Person Prejudice Rectify
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.
GORDON ALLPORT

Become Discover Knowledge Look Needle Ourselves Outline Psychology Supplies Uniqueness
Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.
GORDON ALLPORT

Fact Generalization Given Large Make Rush Thimbleful Tub
Thwarted lives have the most character-conditioned hate
GORDON ALLPORT

Character Condition Country Hate Live Most People Person
Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are reversible when exposed to new knowledge.
GORDON ALLPORT

Expose Knowledge New Only Prejudgement Prejudice Reversible
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.
GORDON ALLPORT

Adapt Belief Impulse Real Realization Reason World
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

Category Event Experience Fresh Handle New Occur Old Redacted Right
Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and “patriotism” . . .
GORDON ALLPORT

Cloe Discover Link Many Patricia Prejudice Studies
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

Another Dying Life Must Suffer Purpose Tell

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