Popular Psychology Quotes

What we have come to, through a combination of popular psychology and expanding technology, is a presumption that all our thoughts and feelings are worth uttering. ~ Judith Martin

Consumerism has worked very hard, with the help of popular psychology ('Just do it!') to convince people that indulgence is good for you, whereas frugality is self-oppression. It ~ Yuval Noah Harari

There is a species of primate in South America more gregarious than most other mammals, with a curious behavior.The members of this species often gather in groups, large and small, and in the course of their mutual chattering , under a wide variety of circumstances, they are induced to engage in bouts of involuntary, convulsive respiration, a sort of loud, helpless, mutually reinforcing group panting that sometimes is so severe as to incapacitate them. Far from being aversive,however, these attacks seem to be sought out by most members of the species, some of whom even appear to be addicted to them.

...the species in Homo sapiens (which does indeed inhabit South America, among other places), and the behavior is laughter. ~ Daniel C. Dennett

Moreover, even at elite colleges, the personnel attracted to college admissions are seldom themselves part of the intellectual elite. Yet their job is to select students unlike themselves, to be taught by professors unlike themselves, for careers unlike theirs. It can hardly be surprising that admissions personnel are drawn toward non-intellectual criteria and toward ideas not unlike the notion of judging "the whole person," as found among educators at the pre-college level. Over the years, all sorts of criteria from popular psychology and sociological speculation have assumed increasing weight visa-vis such standard intellectual criteria as academic records and test scores. The ~ Thomas Sowell

Many books in popular psychology are a melange of the author's comments, a dollop of research, and stupefyingly dull transcriptions from interviews. ~ Carol Tavris

Popular psychology is a mass of cant, of slush and of superstition worthy of the most flourishing days of the medicine man. ~ John Dewey

If you fail to believe you will procrastinate or become idealustic about how awesome you are at working hard and managing your time, you never develop a strategy for outmaneuvering your own weakness. ~ David McRaney

Do not think that your magic ring will work if you are not yourself Solomon. ~ Idries Shah

It is not sufficient to produce the next generation. You must also teach the new generation how to survive in an abnormal toxic world. ~ Steven Magee

Inheritance and culture obscure people's higher capacities. ~ Idries Shah

Indisputably we live in a shaped reality, an artificialism. Most people who grasp this are thinking only at a consumer-level, of the "things" they like and need and feel impelled to acquire. But our societal and political arrangements are just as much manipulations of game-pieces and rules as is any Atari or Sega product. The subliminal psychology that drives people to become addicted to games, not to be able to see over the edges of their labyrinths, is transferable to any field whatsoever. ~ Kenny Smith

People who have stepped fully into their power know they don't have to push or force things; they know that real power comes from surrender. ~ Renae A. Sauter

It's clear by now that the problem of language evolution is completely intractable when you approach it from the perspective of a single discipline. For all the salient questions to be answered, the multidisciplinary nature of the field will have to become even more so. So far, it has taken years for individuals in different departments to start talking, to develop research questions that make sense for more than one narrow line of inquiry, and to start to understand one another's points of view. The field of language evolution needs students who can synthesize information from neuroscience, psychology, computer modeling, genetics, and linguistics. The more this happens, the richer and wider the field will become, instead of devolving around one or two theoretical issues. ~ Christine Kenneally

When a man wants to know who lives in the apartment opposite, it's always a pretty girl," I said. "When a pretty girl wants to know, it's generally a man with field glasses. One of the most popular of New York sports. ~ Joel Townsley Rogers

The symbols of the self arise in the depths of the body, and they express its materiality every bit as much as the perceiving consciousness. The symbol is thus a living body ~ Carl Jung

Four minutes of eye contact brings people closer to each other better than everything else. ~ Arthur Aron

At first you might wonder what you did to deserve such treatment. Nothing, probably, so that doesn't matter. What matters is that, eventually, the abuse becomes the status quo. It's no longer about the whats and whys ("what did I do?" "why are they doing this?") but the whens and hows ("when are they going to do it?" "how are they going to get me?"). Persecution becomes inevitable, inescapable. And once you get into the victim mindset, you're fucked. The bullies don't even need to hurt you now; your poor, warped, pathetic brain is doing half the work for them. ~ Nenia Campbell

All good storytellers study psychology ... Novelists, filmmakers, even actors. You have to know the rules of human behavior before you can make your characters break them. ~ Katharine McGee

I particularly enjoy cello music because our daughter plays the cello. I have listened to her practice for so many hours that I am familiar with the music written for that instrument. I am also fond of the popular music of the 1930s because my future husband and I danced to it so many Saturday nights when we were in college. ~ Beverly Cleary

I wasn't the most popular girl in school by any means. ~ Cindy Crawford

I would like to focus on the use of the word silly for a particular people's point of views. Everybody has what is called a plausibility structure; we all have sets of background beliefs through which we process and assess evidence. When you call something silly, you are merely saying, 'Relative to my plausibility structure that isn't within that structure.' That's merely a comment on your own psychology, there's nothing more to it so I don't find that very helpful," (Randal Rauser, Unbelieveable Feb. 1, 2014). ~ Randal Rauser

We find what's in our own heads. ~ T. Scott McLeod

Obviously it makes a difference if an author has a public online profile of some sort, even just down to the level of having a moderately popular blog. Most books sell 5, 10, or 15 thousand copies. Most are midlist books. With those people, even a modest online presence can make a difference in sales. ~ Patrick Nielsen Hayden

We have been brainwashed by school, indoctrinated by industrial propaganda, and mesmerized by the popular media into believing that compliance is not only safe but right and necessary. ~ Seth

CLEAR THINKERS REQUIRED Tom Donohue, president and CEO of the three-million-member-strong U.S. Chamber of Commerce, organizes very popular small dinners and invites a wide variety of guests. The express purpose is the exchange of ideas. Tom brings together twenty titans of industry and empowers each with just one minute to talk on a key issue. Then Tom makes his summation. He connects all the dots in a masterful fashion, tying together what everyone has said. Chamber board member Barry Appleton says, "It is this distilled knowledge of clear and concise thinking that is the magic that keeps everyone coming back for more. ~ Darcy Rezac

Most popular records are action-packed to the last semi-quaver. ~ Chris Squire

Should you operate upon your clients as objects, you risk reducing them to less than human. Following the culture of appropriation and mastery your clients become a kind of extension of yourself, of your ego. In the appropriation and objectification mode, your clients' well-being and success in treatment reflect well upon you. You "did" something to them, you made them well. You acted upon them and can take the credit for successful therapy or treatment. Conversely, if your clients flounder or regress, that reflects poorly on you. On this side of things the culture of appropriation and mastery says that you are not doing enough. You are not exerting enough influence, technique or therapeutic force. What anxiety this can breed for some clinicians!



DBT offers a framework and tools for a treatment that allows clients to retain their full humanity. Through the practice of mindfulness, you can learn to cultivate a fuller presence to the moments of your life, and even with your clients and your work with them. This presence potentiates an encounter between two irreducible human beings, meeting professionally, of course, and meeting humanly. The dialectical framework, which embraces contradictions and gives you a way of seeing that life is pregnant with creative tensions, allows for your discovery of your limits and possibilities, gives you a way of seeing the dynamic nature of reality that is anything but sitting still; shows you that your identity grows fr ~ Scott E. Spradlin

The police can be more corrupt than the criminals. ~ Steven Magee

Truth is beheld by the intellect which is appeased by the most satisfying relations of the intelligible; beauty is beheld by the imagination which is appeased by the most satisfying relations of the sensible. The first step in the direction of truth is to understand the frame and scope of the intellect itself, to comprehend the act itself of intellection. Aristotle's entire system of philosophy rests upon his book of psychology and that, I think, rests on his statement that the same attribute cannot at the same time and in the same connexion belong to and not belong to the same subject. The first step in the direction of beauty is to understand the frame and scope of the imagination, to comprehend the act itself of esthetic apprehension. ~ James Joyce

I am small.
So are stars from a distance. It's all a matter of perspective. ~ C. Kennedy

The idea that people can be improved by being offended will finally have to meet the idea (espoused some of the time by some of the same people) that books, popular songs, movies, television shows, sex videos, and so on are "just fiction" or "just art" and therefore exist "for their own sake" and have no influence. To argue that works of art are "only" fictions or self-expressions and therefore cannot cause bad behavior is to argue also that they cannot cause good behavior. It is, moreover, to make an absolute division between art and life, experience and life, mind and body - a division that is intolerable to anyone who is at all serious about being a human or a member of a community or even a citizen. ~ Wendell Berry

Beyond the pain, anger and unforgiveness, there is only one thing; love. This is where the magic happens ~ Renae A. Sauter

The psychology of individuals – warts and all – must be a central consideration in the formulation of any practical investing approach. The good news here is that others' misbehavior will consistently and systematically create opportunities for you. The bad news is that you are prone to all of the same quirks and are just as likely, in the absence of strict adherence to the rules, to create the same opportunities for others. ~ Daniel Crosby

Jerry and I hoped that it would be a popular bestseller. ~ Tim LaHaye

When Clark Gable, MGM's most popular and famous leading man asked for a percentage of the profits from his films, he was flatly refused. A top executive was reported to have said, He's nobody. We took him from nobody. We lavished him with lessons and publicity and now he's the most desired man in the world. Who taught him how to walk? We straightened his teeth and capped them into that smile. We taught this dumb cluck how to depict great emotions, and now he wants a piece of the action? Never! ~ Jeanine Basinger

Self-reflection or autognosis reveals that what is given in consciousness is, first and foremost, integral connectedness and organic unity of all thinking, feeling, and desiring. At the same time, self-reflection reveals that this connected unity is the ultimate reality that can be reached. "Consciousness cannot go behind itself." Whatever we propose to think forms part of this organic unity of our mind and is a result or consequence of it. There is no means of jumping beyond consciousness, and any attempt to explain with the help of any other imaginary system the radical connectedness in which we live and that is our mind would be absurd. Our mind is the very presupposition of all explanation. For to explain a phenomenon means, in the last instance, to point out its place and its part within the living economy of consciousness, and to determine the "meaning" it has in the original source of all meaning: life. ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Parmenides all state or suggest that thinking the right kinds of thoughts positively transforms our relationship to our environment. If thoughts are the right kind, it is presumably because they build on the particular receptivity of human nature to true knowledge about the nature of things, knowledge that, in turn, brings the person into greater harmony with the world around him. Thought is thus a uniquely transformative encounter with reality. ~ Brooke Holmes

A woman may walk around naked in front of a man, but a civilized man would never jump over her, driven by his primordial state of arousal, regardless of an involuntary erection. Erection is involuntary, but whether a man would act on it, is voluntary. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Vibration can be shifted through the mastery of thought ~ Alaric Hutchinson

The self is defined psychologically as the psychic totality of the individual. Anything that a [person] postulates as being a greater totality than [oneself] can become a symbol of the self. For this reason the symbol of the self is not always as total as the definition would require. ~ Carl Jung

She's dressed in a white her soul doesn't reflect, a drop-dead beauty with drop-dead morals. ~ Halo Scot

There is machinery in the mind that is consciousness. Knowing the machine is the dawn of a new era. ~ Allan Wesler

I'm not here to disagree with people or try to change anyone's mind. I'm just here to accept and love others right where they are – no matter their belief systems or backgrounds. ~ Alaric Hutchinson

Generally young men are regarded as radicals. This is a popular misconception. The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life. ~ Woodrow Wilson

Controlling unwanted thoughts is not the problem. Believing, thrusting, and taking direction from them is. ~ Charles F. Glassman

Laziness is always your fault. It is the sign that a man has persevered in uselessness for too long. ~ Idries Shah

Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable. ~ Theodore J. Kaczynski

So, it's the ever popular Firstborn Child of Doom prophecy,huh, ice-boy? How very cliche. Why can't it ever be the third nephew twice removed who's fated to destroy the worls?
Iron Prophecy: The Iron Fey~ Puck ~ Julie Kagawa

He's cutting the heart out of the American dream to own a home and have a good job ... and still he's popular

Tip O'Neill on Ronald Reagan ~ Chris Matthews

To be a conscientious human is real karma - it is real spirituality - it is real religion. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Finally, the work of the minister tended to be judged by his success in a single area - the saving of souls in measurable numbers. The local minister was judged either by his charismatic powers or by his ability to prepare his congregation for the preaching of some itinerant ministerial charmer who would really awaken its members. The 'star' system prevailed in religion before it reached the theater. As the evangelical impulse became more widespread and more dominant, the selection and training of ministers was increasingly shaped by the revivalist criterion of ministerial merit. The Puritan ideal of the minister as an intellectual and educational leader was steadily weakened in the face of the evangelical ideal of the minister as a popular crusader and exhorter. Theological education itself became more instrumental. Simple dogmatic formulations were considered sufficient. In considerable measure the churches withdrew from intellectual encounters with the secular world, gave up the idea that religion is a part of the whole life of intellectual experience, and often abandoned the field of rational studies on the assumption that they were the natural province of science alone. By 1853 an outstanding clergyman complained that there was 'an impression, somewhat general, that an intellectual clergyman is deficient in piety, and that an eminently pious minister is deficient in intellect. ~ Richard Hofstadter

In order to be an executive coach with a thriving practice, you need to have been a leader, be fluent in psychology, and have a evidence-based methodology." My book can't help you with #1, but it can help you with the rest. ~ Nadine Greiner