Secular Psychology Quotes

It is possible that our present-day discussion about needs might be framed more by secular psychological theories than by Scripture. If this is so, we should be careful about saying, "Jesus meets all our needs." At first, this has a plausible biblical ring to it. Christ _is_a friend; God _is_ a loving Father; Christians _do_ experience a sense of meaningfulness and confidence in knowing God's love. It makes Christ the answer to our problems. Yet if our use of the term "needs" is ambiguous, and its range of meaning extends all the way to selfish desires, then there will be some situations where we should say that Jesus does not intend to meet our needs, but that he intends to change our needs. ~ Edward T. Welch

It is an act of homophobia to believe that people in the LGBT community are either too sinful to respond to God's call on their life, or to believe that people in the LGBT community have a fixed nature that will never, according to the blustering, unfounded, and uncharitable declarations of secular psychology, change by the power of God's command. What does God change? Our heart. That is where it all starts. ~ Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

Understand that relativity is everywhere, and that we view everything through its lens - rose-colored or otherwise. When you meet someone in a different country or city and it seems that you have magical connection, realize that the enchantment might be limited to the surrounding circumstances. ~ Dan Ariely

There, an engaging tour guide told jokes and made witty quips in between sensationalized and brutal stories of inmates "getting what they deserved" because, as she put it, "if you gonna act like an animal, you gonna get treated like one." (We know, thanks to Goffman and pretty much every behavior study out there, that it often works the other way around.) ~ Margee Kerr

The freeway experience ... is the only secular communion Los Angeles has. Mere driving on the freeway is in no way the same as participating in it. Anyone can "drive" on the freeway, and many people with no vocation for it do, hesitating here and resisting there, losing the rhythm of the lane change, thinking about where they came from and where they are going. Actual participation requires total surrender, a concentration so intense as to seem a kind of narcosis, a rapture-of-the-freeway. The mind goes clean. The rhythm takes over. ~ Joan Didion

Mom, Dad, Baby, they were three advanced people with three advanced degrees in psychology - they thought more before nine A.M. than most people thought all month. ~ Gillian Flynn

I'm getting my psychology degree with a focus on marriage and family therapy. ~ Danielle Fishel

Human life is so strangely constituted that even perfected intellectual understanding combined with the richest experience is incapable of conquering innate weaknesses. Even if it thoroughly analyzes itself, psychology (and this is one of the dubious aspects of psychoanalysis) can, to be sure, recognize its flawed native characteristics, but it cannot eliminate them. Understanding (them) is not the same as overcoming (them) and, again and again, we see the wisest of human beings helpless in the fact of their small follies which everyone else observes with a smile. ~ Stefan Zweig

When I look at the world I'm pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic. ~ Carl Rogers

Opportunities change, strategies change, but people and psychology do not change. If trend-following systems don't work well, something else will. There's always money being lost, so someone out there has to win. ~ Gil Blake

I don't believe in psychology. I believe in good moves ~ Bobby Fischer

Paradoxically .. the very feminist movement that gave women more options also helped create pressure on many of us to be strong, successful, and independent - the kind of women who would theoretically be immune to any form of abuse from men. As a result, women who are in gaslighting and other types of abusive relationships may feel doubly ashamed: first, for being in a bad relationship, and second, for not living up to their self-imposed standards of strength and independence. ~ Robin Stern

Psychology is still trying to explain the perception of the position of an object in space, along with its shape, size, and so on, and to understand the sensations of color. ~ James J. Gibson

Find something beautiful to focus on daily and allow Inspiration to have its way with you. ~ Alaric Hutchinson

Love is the great intangible. In our nightmares, we can create beasts out of pure emotion. Hate stalks the streets with dripping fangs, fear flies down narrow alleyways on leather wings, and jealousy spins sticky webs across the sky. In daydreams, we can maneuver with poise, foiling an opponent, scoring high on fields of glory while crowds cheer, cutting fast to the heart of an adventure. But what dream state is love? Frantic and serene, vigilant and calm, wrung-out and fortified, explosive and sedate –love commands a vast army of moods. Hoping for victory, limping from the latest skirmish, lovers enter the arena once again. Sitting still, we are as daring as gladiators. ~ Diane Ackerman

But, as the results presented in this book (and others) show, we are all far less rational in our decision making than standard economic theory assumes. Our irrational behaviors are neither random nor senseless-they are systematic and predictable. We all make the same types of mistakes over and over, because of the basic wiring of our brains. So wouldn't it make sense to modify standard economics and move away from naive psychology, which often fails the tests of reason, introspection, and-most important-empirical scrutiny?

Wouldn't economics make a lot more sense if it were based on how people actually behave, instead of how they should behave? As I said in the Introduction, that simple idea is the basis of behavioral economics, an emerging field focused on the (quite intrusive) idea that people do not always behave rationally and that they often make mistakes in their decisions. ~ Dan Ariely

For me it's always about first impressions. I trust my instincts. I love to prepare if it's something that requires training. But I don't like to prepare the psychology too much. I enjoy the psychology of the character but I work better from a first impression. ~ Billy Zane

The problem in our society is the ego psychology and conventional wisdom about "look out for #1." That conventional wisdom thinks that "love your enemy" is to some a principle no one can ever live by. ~ Robert Thurman

Subtraction stories Accounts that explain "the secular" as merely the subtraction of religious belief, as if the secular is what's left over after we subtract superstition. In contrast, Taylor emphasizes that the secular is produced, not just distilled. ~ James K.A. Smith

You are the average of the people you spend the most time with. And that's why it's not always where you are in life, but who you have by your side that matters most. Some people drain you and others provide soul food. Spend more time with nice people who are smart, driven and open-minded about personal growth and opportunity. There's no need to rush into a relationship you are unsure of, or socialize with those who hold you back. Be sure to get in the company of those who feed your spirit, and give the gift of your absence to those who do not appreciate your presence. ~ John Geiger

The teenage brain sees more than meets the eye. ~ Forrest Gold

Life's struggle is a partnership. We fight and win together, or we truly lose the vision of our powerful spirituality and awesome oneness. ~ Maya Emmett

If you think you have to step outside your integrity to live your dream; how much can you really believe in it. ~ Renae A. Sauter

Every criticism, judgment, diagnosis, and expression of anger is the tragic expression of an unmet need. ~ Marshall B. Rosenberg

The fully human person is in deep and meaningful contact with the world outside of him. He not only listens to himself, but to the voices of the world. The breadth of his own individual experience is infinitely multiplied through a sensitive empathy with others. He suffers with the suffering, rejoices with the joyful. He is born again in every springtime, feels the impact of the great mysteries of life: birth, growth, love, suffering, death. His heart skips along with the 'young lovers', and he knows something of the exhilaration that is in them. He also knows the ghetto's philosophy of despair, the loneliness of suffering without relief, and the bell never tolls without tolling in some strange way for him. ~ John Joseph Powell

Playing for Billy Martin is like being married to him. Right now, we're all sleeping on the couch. ~ Matt Keough

The America in which we grew up is vastly different from the America the secular-socialist Left want to create. And that's why saving America is the fundamental challenge of our time. The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did. ~ Newt Gingrich

The dirty little secret of both clinical psychology and biological psychiatry is that they have completely given up on the notion of cure. ~ Martin Seligman

Nothing that is historical can relate itself, from its own ground, to anything messianic. Therefore, the Kingdom of God is not the telos of the historical dynamic; it cannot be established as a goal. From the standpoint of history, it is not the goal but the terminus [Ende]. Therefore, the secular order cannot be built on the idea of the Divine Kingdom, and theocracy has no political but only a religious meaning. ~ Walter Benjamin

More succinctly put, Inspirational Psychology offers ways to live, learn about, and practice love. ~ Lee L Jampolsky

The freedom of an unscheduled afternoon brought confusion rather than joy. Julius had always been focused. When he was not seeing patients, other important projects and activities-writing, teaching, tennis, research-clamored for his attention. But today nothing seemed important. He suspected that nothing had ever been important, that his mind had arbitrarily imbued projects with importance and then cunningly covered its traces. Today he saw through the ruse of a lifetime. Today there was nothing important to do, and he ambled aimlessly down Union Street. ~ Irvin D. Yalom

Everything 'happens'. People can 'do' nothing. From the time we are born to the time we die things happen, happen, happen, and we think we are doing. This is our normal state in life, and even the smallest possibility to do something comes only through the work, and first only in oneself, not externally. ~ P.D. Ouspensky

When I first began examining the global-warming scare, I found nothing more puzzling than the way officially approved scientists kept on being shown to have finagled their data, as in that ludicrous "hockey stick" graph, pretending to prove that the world had suddenly become much hotter than at any time in 1,000 years. Any theory needing to rely so consistently on fudging the evidence, I concluded, must be looked on not as science at all, but as simply a rather alarming case study in the aberrations of group psychology. ~ Christopher Booker

When a monkey loses a banana to a rival, he feels bad, but he doesn't expand the problem by thinking about it over and over. He looks for another banana. He ends up feeling rewarded rather than harmed. Humans use their extra neurons to construct theories about bananas and end up constructing pain. ~ Loretta Graziano Breuning

When dissonance is present, in addition to trying to reduce it, the person will actively avoid situations and information which would likely increase the dissonance. ~ Leon Festinger

She couldn't explain it except with the word: there. She was there. Present in herself. She wasn't always, so it was worth remarking upon. ~ Rachel Hartman