Psychologist Fromm Quotes

#1. All the world's parenting advice can be distilled to two simple rules: pay attention to what your children are fascinated by, and praise them for their effort. [Paraphrasing Carol Dweck, a psychologist who studies motivation] #Quote by Daniel Coyle

#2. If an individual is able to love productively, he loves himself, too; if he can love only others, he cannot love at all. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#3. As long as anyone believes that his ideal and purpose is outside him, that it is above the clouds, in the past or in the future, he will go outside himself and seek fulfillment where it cannot be found. He will look for solutions and answers at every point except where they can be found- in himself. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#4. Psychologists really aim to be scientists, white-coat stuff, with elaborate statistics, running experiments. #Quote by Daniel Kahneman

#5. Some who question the authenticity of the memories of abuse do so in part because of the intensity and sincerity of the accused persons who deny the abuse . . . the current denials of those accused of sexual abuse are not proof that the allegations are false. Research with known rapists, pedophiles, and incest offenders has illustrated that they often exhibit a cognitive distortion –a tendency to justify, minimize, or rationalize their behavior (Gudjonsson, 1992). Because accused persons are motivated to verbally and even mentally deny an abusive past, simple denials cannot constitute cogent evidence that the victim's memories are not authentic.
Loftus, E. (1993). The reality of repressed memories. American Psychologist, 48, 518-537. #Quote by Elizabeth F. Loftus

#6. Jesus and Satan appear here as repre sentatives of two opposite principles. Satan is the representative of material consumption and of power over nature and Man. Jesus is the representative of being, and of the idea that not-having is the premise for being. The world has followed Satan's principles, since the time of the gospels. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#7. I have trouble with letting go. That's my problem. Anybody that has extreme highs and extreme lows is bipolar to any psychologist and that's not necessarily the truth. #Quote by Kevin Gates

#8. Our problem is to discover a principle of differentiation and yet relationship lucid enough to justify and to purify both scientific and philosophical knowledge by accepting their mutual independence. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#9. When you are discussing a successful coach," sports psychologist Bruce Ogilvie once said, not of Ramsay but of the entire profession, "you are not necessarily drawing the profile of an entirely healthy person. #Quote by David Halberstam

#10. Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be. Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar, and you'll live as you've never lived before. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#11. To love one person productively means to be related to his human core, to him as representing mankind. Love for one individual, in so far as it is divorced from love for man, can refer only to the superficial and to the accidental; of necessity it remains shallow. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#12. Social psychologist argued that even severe mental illness was the result of society labeling unusual behavior rather than of biochemical processes. #Quote by Thomas J. Scheff

#13. Freedom is the fundamental condition for any growth. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#14. As the psychologist Steven Pinker puts it, "Exposure to worlds that can be seen only through the eyes of a foreigner, an explorer, or a historian can turn an unquestioned norm ('That's the way it's done') into an explicit observation ('That's what our tribe happens to do now')." This is the point that Herodotus was making when he told the story of the Greeks and the Indians. #Quote by Paul Bloom

#15. In tense moments, explains the clinical psychologist Rod Martin, the purpose of pranks like Venanzi's isn't merely to elicit a chuckle; joking actually reformats your perception of a stressor. "Humor is about playing with ideas and concepts," said Martin, who teaches at the University of Western Ontario. "So whenever we see something as funny, we're looking at it from a different perspective. When people are trapped in a stressful situation and feeling overwhelmed, they're stuck in one way
of thinking: This is terrible. I've got to get out of here. But if you can take a humorous perspective, then by definition you're looking at it differently - you're breaking out of that rigid mind-set. #Quote by Taylor Clark

#16. Productive work, love and thought are possible only if a person can be, when necessary, quiet and alone. To be able to listen to oneself is the necessary condition for relating oneself to others. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#17. The confusion between temperament and character has had serious consequences for ethical theory. Preferences with regard to differences in temperament are mere matters of subjective taste.
But differences in character are ethically of the most fundamental importance. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#18. What an epithet can be derived from that - "Frivolous philologist!" For thirty years I have been waiting for a chance to use it, but every time I get into an argument with a savant, he turns out to be of some other persuasion - a psychologist, perhaps, or a podiatrist. The neck my knife would fit has never presented itself. #Quote by A.J. Liebling

#19. Some philosophical research projects - or problematics, to speak with the more literary types - are rather like working out the truths of chess. A set of mutually agreed-upon rules are presupposed - and seldom discussed - and the implications of those rules are worked out, articulated, debated, refined. So far, so good. Chess is a deep and important human artifact, about which much of value has been written. But some philosophical research projects are more like working out the truths of chmess. Chmess is just like chess except that the king can move two squares in any direction, not one. I just invented it. … There are just as many a priori truths of chmess as there are of chess (an infinity), and they are just as hard to discover. And that means that if people actually did get involved in investigating the truths of chmess, they would make mistakes, which would need to be corrected, and this opens up a whole new field of a priori investigation, the higher-order truths of chmess … Now none of this is child's play. In fact, one might be able to demonstrate considerable brilliance in the group activity of working out the higher-order truths of chmess. Here is where psychologist Donald Hebb's dictum comes in handy: If it isn't worth doing, it isn't worth doing well. #Quote by Daniel C. Dennett

#20. To be concentrated means to live fully in the present. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#21. since men are equal and thus have the same wish for happiness, and since there is not enough wealth to satisfy them all to the same extent, they necessarily fight against each other and want power to secure the future enjoyment of what they have at present. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#22. First mark of the self-preservative instinct of the great psychologist: he never seeks himself, he has no eyes for himself, no interest or curiosity in himself #Quote by Friedrich Nietzsche

#23. Contingent on what, though? Some bases for feeling good about oneself may be worse than others. Jennifer Crocker, a psychologist at Ohio State University, and her colleagues have shown that the prognosis is particularly bad when self-esteem hinges on outdoing others (competitive success), approval by others, physical appearance, or academic achievement.47 Consider the last of those. When children's self-esteem rises or falls with how well they do at school, achievement can resemble an addiction, "requiring ever greater success to avoid feelings of worthlessness." And if it looks as though success is unlikely, kids may "disengage from the task, deciding it doesn't matter, rather than suffer the loss of self-esteem that accompanies failure. #Quote by Alfie Kohn

#24. Question: If you put a psychologist in a room with a man who thinks he's Napoleon and leave them there for a year (or ten or twenty), will you end up with two Skinner men or two guys with their hands in their shirts? Answer: Insufficient data. #Quote by Stephen King

#25. I've never, ever had any therapy. Some might say I need it, but I've never seen a shrink or a psychologist or anything like that. #Quote by Criss Angel

#26. Psychologists call it "free-floating" anxiety. What contradictory words. Anxiety doesn't free-float. It stalks. It attacks. It lands on you with a thud. #Quote by Martha Manning

#27. Parents need to see that every situation that their kids find themselves in is a teaching situation, and they need to take the time to explore cost and effect. So talking to your children, explaining things to children as to why things happen in the world. Getting them to see cost and relationships between events is the best way to increase comprehension skills. Daynette Gardiner, the best School Psychologist in The Bahamas. #Quote by Drexel Deal

#28. The value judgments we make determine our actions, and upon their validity rests our mental health and happiness. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#29. Only dogmatic thinking, the result of the laziness of mind and heart, tries to construct simplistic schemes of the either-or type that block any real understanding. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#30. A society whose members are helpless need idols. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#31. Among the many forms of alienation, the most frequent one is alienation in language. If I express a feeling with a word, let us say, if I say "I love you," the word is meant to be an indication of the reality which exists within myself, the power of my loving. The word "love" is meant to be a symbol of the fact love, but as soon as it is spoken it tends to assume a life of its own, it becomes a reality. I am under the illusion that the saying of the word is the equivalent of the experience, and soon I say the word and feel nothing, except the thought of love which the word expresses. The alienation of language shows the whole complexity of alienation. Language is one of the most precious human achievements; to avoid alienation by not speaking would be foolish -- yet one must be always aware of the danger of the spoken word, that it threatens to substitute itself for the living experience. The same holds true for all other achievements of man; ideas, art, any kind of man-made objects. They are man's creations; they are valuable aids for life, yet each one of them is also a trap, a temptation to confuse life with things, experience with artifacts, feeling with surrender and submission. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#32. The near-continuous stream of new information pumped out by the Web also plays to our natural tendency to "vastly overvalue what happens to us right now," as Union College psychologist Christopher Chabris explains. We crave the new even when we know that "the new is more often trivial than essential. #Quote by Nicholas Carr

#33. Currently, U.S. society has been encouraged by its political and subsidized mass-media intelligentsia to view U.S. life as a continual "morning in America" paradise, where the only social problems occur in the inner cities. Psychologists call this denial. #Quote by Ishmael Reed

#34. In a fascinating study, psychologist David McClelland found a direct link between Greek accomplishments and the prominence of "achievement themes" in the literature of the day. The greater the amount of such inspirational literature, the greater their "real-world" achievements. Conversely, when the frequency of inspirational literature diminished, so did their accomplishments. At #Quote by Eric Weiner

#35. I am neither a theologian, nor a scholar learned in the history of religions, nor an anthropologist. Psychology is the only branch of learning in which I am particularly versed. To the psychologist the religious propensities of man must be at least as interesting as any other of the facts pertaining to his mental constitution. #Quote by William James

#36. Love is the only way of knowledge, which in the act of union answers my quest. In the act of loving, of giving myself, in the act of penetrating the other person, I find myself, I discover myself, I discover us both, I discover man. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#37. In the development of both capitalism and communism, as we visualize them in the next fifty or a hundred years, the processes that encourage human alienation will continue. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#38. Every concept in our conscious mind, in short, has its own psychic associations. While such associations may vary in intensity (according to relative importance of the concept to our whole personality, or according to the other ideas and even complexes to which it is associated in our unconscious), they are capable of changing the "normal" character of that concept. It may even become something quite different as it drifts below the level of consciousness.

These subliminal aspects of everything that happens to us may seem to play very little part in our daily lives. But in dream analysis, where the psychologist is dealing with expressions of the unconscious, they are very relevant, for they are the almost invisible roots of our conscious thoughts. That is why commonplace objects or ideas can assume such powerful psychic significance in a dream that we may awake seriously disturbed, in spite of having dreamed of nothing worse than a locked room or a missed train.

The images produced in dreams are much more picturesque and vivid than the concepts and experiences that are their waking counterparts. One of the reasons for this is that, in a dream, such concepts can express their unconscious meaning. In our conscious thoughts, we restrain ourselves within the limits of rational statements-statements that are much less colorful because we have stripped them of most of their psychic associations. #Quote by C.G. Jung

#39. It is hardly necessary to stress the fact that the ability to love as an act of giving depends on the character development of the person. It presupposes the attainment of a predominantly productive orientation; in this orientation the person has overcome dependency, narcissistic omnipotence, the wish to exploit others, or to hoard, and has acquired faith in his own human powers, courage to rely on his powers in the attainment of his goals. To the degree that these qualities are lacking, he is afraid of giving himself - hence of loving. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#40. It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas and feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consensual validation as such has no bearing on reason or mental health. #Quote by Erich Fromm

#41. The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process in man, but no matter how violently they differ otherwise they all agree that it has little to do with logic and is not much conditioned by overt facts. #Quote by H.L. Mencken

#42. People do not see that the main question is not : "Am I loved?" which is to a large extent the question : "Am I approved of? Am I protected? Am I admired?" The main question is: "Can I love? #Quote by Erich Fromm

#43. I believe it is the duty of science, of humanity, to discover as much as we can. But I am a physical scientist, not a psychologist. The #Quote by Graeme Simsion

#44. A psychologist once asked a group of college students to jot down, in thirty seconds, the initials of the people they disliked. Some of the students taking the test could think of only one person. Others listed as many as fourteen. The interesting fact that came out of this bit of research was this: Those who disliked the largest number were themselves the most widely disliked. When we find ourselves continually disliking others, we ought to bring ourselves up short and ask ourselves the question: "What is wrong with me." #Quote by James Keller