Quotes about Psychology

When we have many things within ourselves which are neither known nor accepted, then such things complicate our lives horrifyingly, and in fact provoke all sorts of situations which could be avoided through knowledge of ourselves.

Arise my soul, and review your deeds which have preceeded from you.  Scrutinize them closely, and shed the rain of your tears, declaring openly to Christ your thoughts and deeds, so that you may be justified.

Saint Andrew of Crete

Continually forgive others.  Forgive AT ONCE, not one second latter, not one half second later, because if you hesitate to forgive, jealousy comes in the door, then hatred and envy.  Forgive instantly as Christ forgives instantly.

Patience, forgiveness and joy are the three greatest characteristics of divine love.  They are characteristics of all real love - if there is such a thing as real love outside of divine love.  Without these three characteristics, love is not love.  If you give the name 'love' to anything else, it is as though you were giving the name 'sheep' to a goat or a pig.

Saint Nikolai Velimirovich

There are very many unpleasant states that occur within each person; without knowledge one can never be free of them.

A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get in accord with them, for they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.

I am convinced that the deepest desire within each of us is to be liberated from the controlling influences of our own psychic madness or patterns of fear. All other things--the disdain of ordinary life, the need to control others rather than be controlled, the craving for material goods as a means of security and protection against the winds of chaos--are external props that serve as substitutes for the real battle, which is the one waged within the individual soul.

The central premise of this book is that the Western psychological notion of what it means to have a self is flawed.

Psychologically time is seldom homogenous but rather is as full of shapes as space.

Most people tell you they want to get out of kindergarten, but don't believe them. Don't believe them! All they want you to do is to mend their broken toys. "Give me back my wife. Give me back my job. Give me back my money. Give me back my reputation, my success." This is what they want; they want their toys replaced. That's all. Even the best psychologist will tell you that, that people don't really want to be cured. What they want is relief; a cure is painful.

Please do not confuse me with a shrink….  I am a stretch.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, and that one is prepared in the end, to be defeated, and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals.

"Don't look for perfection in me. I want to acknowledge my own imperfection, I want to understand that that is part of the endlessness of my growth.  It’s absolutely useless at this stage in your life, with all of the shit piled up in your closet, to walk around and try to kid yourself about your perfection. Out of the raw material you break down you grow and absorb the energy.  You work yourself from inside out, tearing out, destroying, and finding a sense of nothingness.  That nothingness allows God to come in.  But this somethingness— ego and prejudices and limitations— is your raw material.  If you process and refine it all, you can open consciously.  Otherwise, you will never come to anything that represents yourself...The only thing that can create a oneness inside you is the ability to see more of yourself as you work everyday to open deeper and say, fine,  ‘I’m short tempered,’ or ‘Fine, I’m aggressive,’ or, ‘Fine, I love to make money,’ or, ‘I have no feeling for anybody else.’ Once you recognize you’re all of these things, you’ll finally be able to take a breath and allow these things to open."

"The charnel ground is that great graveyard in which the complexities of samsara and nirvana lie buried."

Intuition (is) perception via the unconcious.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

A total absence of self-doubt is the first sign of insanity.

Inherent within the dilemma is a solution.

It is not freedom from, but rather freedom within, freedom to.

Gradual awakening means that change and healing happen gradually as a result of the accumulation of causes. This is more the common way that healing is understood to occur. As a result of doing this and that a person gradually gets better.

attend to experience simply without giving it meaning, feel it, and receive it

"Looking at why people treat each other so violently. We've always known that this violence comes from the urge humans fell to control and dominate one another, but only recently have we studied this phenomenon from the inside, from the point of view of the individual's consciousness. We have asked what happens inside a human being that makes him want to control someone else. We have found that when and individual walks up to another person and engages in a conversation, which happens billions of times each day in the world, one of two things can happen. That individual can come away felling string or feeling weak depending on what occurs in the interaction."

"We humans always seem to take a manipulative posture. No matter what the particulars of the situation, or the subject matter, we prepare ourselves to say whatever we want in order to prevail in the conversation. Each of us seeks to find some way to control and thus to remain on top in the encounter. If we are successful, or our viewpoint prevails, then rather than feel weak, we receive a psychological boost."

"In other words we humans seek to outwit and control each other not just because of some tangible goal in the outside world that we're trying to achieve, but because of a lift we get psychologically. This is the reason we see so many irrational conflicts in the world both at the individual level and the level of nations."

"The consensus in this matter is now emerging into public consciousness. We humans are realizing how much we manipulate each other and consequently we're reevaluating our motivations. We're looking for another way to interact. I think this reevaluation will be part of the new world view."

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.

The way out is the way in.

I am sure I have heard this several times from places I can't recall, but it's not already in the Gaia Quotes database, so I add this profound insight from the fields of psychological healing and spiritual evolution. It sure has helped me. Probable source: American poet Robert Frost who said what Tsuya posted below in her comment. And Howard Nemerov said the same thing in something he wrote, too. http://quotationsbook.com/quote/42777/

Language is virtually always pathological; hence the solution is to move as fast and far as possible from language to experience, from linguistic to experimental or psychological philosophy. In order to know that we are not in the linguistic maze, we need to determine, according to Berkeley, whether the things we are talking about exist; hence we need to look for the relevant perceptions. For him, this usually means retiring into himself and trying to imagine whether x exists, having formed the best definition possible of x.

A book is a human fact; a great book like Seraphita gathers together numerous psychological elements. These elements become coherent through a sort of psychological beauty. It does the reader a service.

If aspects of the person remain undigested--cut off, denied, projected, rejected, indulged, or otherwise unassimilated--they become the points around which the core forces of greed, hatred and delusion attach themselves.

Don't "should" on me, don't "should" on yourself and don't "should" on anyone else. 

William James, a pioneer in philosophy and psychology, said, "All of life is but a mass of small choices--practical, emotional and intellectual--systematically organized for our greatness or grief." When asked if these choices could be altered, he replied, "Yes, one at a time. But we must never forget that it's not only our big dreams that shape reality...the small choices bear us irresistibly toward our destiny."           

Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain.