Psych Quotes

1. "While the repression of a memory is a psychological process, the suppression of feeling is accomplished by deadening a part of the body or reducing its motility so that feeling is diminished. The repression of the memory is dependent upon and related to the suppression of feeling, for as long as the feeling persists, the memory remains vivid. Suppression entails the development of chronic muscular tension in those areas of the body where the feeling would be experienced. In the case of sexual feeling, this tension is found in and about the abdomen and pelvis"
Author: Alexander Lowen

2. "How he could be a good user of LSD," I asked, "And know about the spiritual dimension - all that sort of thing - and still be a crook? I don't understand.""Then it's time you did. Psychedelic drugs don't change you - they don't change you character - unless you want to be changed. They enable change; they can't impose it..."
Author: Alexander Shulgin

3. "Unfortunately, some family members are so psychotic that no matter how hard you try to forge a healthy relationship, nothing will help. Now that you're an adult, take refuge in the fact that some things are beyond your control. You owe it to yourself to steer clear of people who are harmful to your health."
Author: Andrea Lavinthal

4. "Our secrets, odd or not, are the pins that keep our inner life in place: the inform our psyche with meaning."
Author: Andrei Codrescu

5. "The symptomatology of PTSD.In PTSD a traumatic event is not remembered and relegated to one's past in the same way as other life events. Trauma continues to intrude with visual, auditory, and/or other somatic reality on the lives of its victims. Again and again they relieve the life-threatening experiences they suffered, reacting in mind and body as though such events were still occurring. PTSD is a complex psychobiological condition."
Author: Babette Rothschild

6. "How often do we stand convinced of the truth of our early memories, forgetting that they are assessments made by a child? We can replace the narratives that hold us back by inventing wiser stories, free from childish fears, and, in doing so, disperse long-held psychological stumbling blocks."
Author: Benjamin Zander

7. "Sleepwalking?""Nightmare?""Homicidal psycho jungle cat!"
Author: Bill Watterson

8. "Female adolescence is - universally - an emotionally and psychologically intense period."
Author: Caitlin Flanagan

9. "Seances occur only in darkened rooms, where the ghostly visitors can be seen dimly at best. If we turn up the lights a little, so we have a chance to see what's going on, the spirits vanish. They're shy, we're told, and some of us believe it. In twentieth-century parapsychology laboratories, there is the ‘observer effect': those described as gifted psychics find that their powers diminish markedly whenever sceptics arrive, and disappear altogether in the presence of a conjuror as skilled as James Randi. What they need is darkness and gullibility."
Author: Carl Sagan

10. "His bedroom was a reflection of Bryant's mind, its untidy shelves filled with games and puzzles stacked in ancient boxes, statues and mementoes competing for space with books on every subject imaginable, from Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology to Illustrated British Ballads and A History of Indian Philosophy. "What are you reading at the moment?' asked May. "Batman," said Bryant. "The drawings are terribly good."
Author: Christopher Fowler

11. "I am an observer, I like to watch people. I am into psychology and people - how they act and such."
Author: Dane Cook

12. "Mom, Dad, I'm fourteen, I see what the world is like. And, no, I did not get this from the psychologist...I came to this understanding on my own, from what I really see in myself and about life."
Author: Darryl Steven Markowitz

13. "Had Kurt Cobain not committed suicide in 1994, would his genius have survived the continuous incisions of a media that was only too proud of its ability to chisel away at his fragile psyche in the years before he decided that he'd had enough off their invasions? And, had Jimi Hendrix not passed way in 1970, would he, too have eventually fallen into decline, first equalled, then eclipsed by the brilliant wave of new guitarists: Robin Trower, Ritchie Blackmore, Mick Ronson, who emerged during the early 1970s? In death, Hendrix led by example: in life he could have been left for the dead."
Author: Dave Thompson

14. "Children who cling to parents or who don't want to leave home are stunted in their emotional, psychological growth."
Author: Dirk Benedict

15. "It's a most peculiar psychology—this business of "Science is based on faith too, so there!" Typically this is said by people who claim that faith is a good thing. Then why do they say "Science is based on faith too!" in that angry-triumphal tone, rather than as a compliment? And a rather dangerous compliment to give, one would think, from their perspective. If science is based on 'faith', then science is of the same kind as religion—directly comparable. If science is a religion, it is the religion that heals the sick and reveals the secrets of the stars. It would make sense to say, "The priests of science can blatantly, publicly, verifiably walk on the Moon as a faith-based miracle, and your priests' faith can't do the same." Are you sure you wish to go there, oh faithist? Perhaps, on further reflection, you would prefer to retract this whole business of "Science is a religion too!"
Author: Eliezer Yudkowsky

16. "There always comes, I think, a sort of peak in suffering at which either you win over your pain or your pain wins over you, according as to whether you can, or cannot, call up that extra ounce of endurance that helps you to break through the circle of yourself and do the hitherto impossible. That extra ounce carries you through 'le dernier quart d' heure.' Psychologist have a name for it, I believe. Christians call it the Grace of God."
Author: Elizabeth Goudge

17. "Isolation is devastating to the human psyche."
Author: Gary Chapman

18. "D.H. Lawrence had the impression – that psychoanalysis was shutting sexuality up in a bizarre sort of box painted with bourgeois motifs, in a kind of rather repugnant artificial triangle, thereby stifling the whole of sexuality as a production of desire so as to recast it along entirely different lines, making of it a ‘dirty little secret', a dirty little family secret, a private theater rather than the fantastic factory of nature and production"
Author: Gilles Deleuze

19. "There was a great joke that was forever doing the rounds in the jail and it was probably funny not because it had a humorous punchline but because it was so very true at a deep psychological level. Put anyone in that jail and soon enough they'd actually become a cruel, twisted, sadistic and heartless thug. And some of the prisoners were just as bad."
Author: H.M. Forester

20. "Well, Samantha... you were introduced to this guy. It went downhill from there. That might make it justifiable homicide. From time to time, I've wanted to kill people I knew even less well... strangers in supermarkets." Am I on my roof with a psychopath?"
Author: Huntley Fitzpatrick

21. "Memes can replicate with impressive virulence while leaving swaths of collateral damage—patent medicines and psychic surgery, astrology and satanism, racist myths, superstitions, and (a special case) computer viruses. In a way, these are the most interesting—the memes that thrive to their hosts' detriment, such as the idea that suicide bombers will find their reward in heaven."
Author: James Gleick

22. "When I asked him the meaning of life, Dr. Webb got very quiet and then told me life has no one meaning, it only has whatever meaning each of us puts on our own life. I'll tell you now that I still don't know the meaning of mine. And Lucas Cader, with all his brains and talent, doesn't know the meaning of his, either. But I'll tell you the meaning of all this. The meaning of some bird showing up and some boy disappearing and you knowing all about it. The meaning of this was not to save you, but to warn you instead. To warn you of confusion and delusion and assumption. To warn you of psychics and zombies and ghosts of your lost brother. To warn you of Ada Taylor and her sympathy and mothers who wake you up with vacuums. To warn you of two-foot-tall birds that say they can help, but never do."
Author: John Corey Whaley

23. "...the words I can't say are the holes I punch in the walls of my psyche..."
Author: John Geddes

24. "A writer is bound to have varying degrees of success, and I think that that is partly an issue of how central the burden of the story is to the author's psyche."
Author: John Hersey

25. "The critics often invent authors; they select two dissimilar works - the Tao Te Ching and the 1001 Nights, say - attribute them to the same writer and then determine most scrupulously the psychology of this interesting homme de lettres..."
Author: Jorge Luis Borges

26. "I try to write characters that are as real, emotionally and psychologically, as I can make them; I feel the same way about setting. This often means that I'm drawing from my experiences and observations."
Author: Lauren Oliver

27. "Once the criminal has served his time, he returns to his old neighborhood. There's a good chance he's been psychologically damaged by his time behind bars. His employment prospects have plummeted. While in prison, he's lost many of his noncriminal friends and replaced them with fellow-criminal friends. And now he's back, placing even more strain emotionally and financially on the home that he shattered by leaving in the first place. Incarceration creates collateral damage. In most cases, the harm done by imprisonment is smaller than the benefits; we're still better off for putting people behind bars. But Clear's point is that if you lock up too many people for too long, the collateral damage starts to outweigh the benefit."
Author: Malcolm Gladwell

28. "There is also a psychological phenomenon at work here that I believe is particularly male. A woman or girl--presuming one could be induced to take part in this sort of activity in the first place--having burned her hair and eyebrows would conclude that she had been lucky and reduce the amount of gas she put into the balloon next time. The man doesn't come to the same conclusion at all. He, singed and blackened, arrives at the point of view that he still has a margin of error to play with. After all, he isn't dead, and he's hardly likely to burn his eyebrows off again. They've already gone, history; he's moved on. There can be but one deduction--the dose needs to be increased."
Author: Mark Barrowcliffe

29. "I know that Wes Craven feels watching horror films does have a psychological effect, in a good way. It is very cathartic. He might be right about that."
Author: Marley Shelton

30. "Most psychologists/philosophers we've learned about have experienced severe depressions, attempted suicide, were considered 'freaks' or 'insane' by their peers, locked themselves in their rooms, felt socially isolated, were either celibate or extremely promiscuous, and rarely found 'love"
Author: Megan Boyle

31. "Why does Lewis Black have so much hatred for goodness? I do not know. Because I am not a trained psychologist, I think it would be unethical for me to attempt to analyze him. But based upon his feelings regarding candy corn, I think it is safe to assume that he hates freedom, hates himself, and wants to fuck his mother."
Author: Michael Ian Black

32. "Your behavior isn't conforming to your known psychological profile."
Author: Nalini Singh

33. "His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion."
Author: Oscar Wilde

34. "There is no talking rationally, using logic or facts, with someone under the spell of the psychic epidemic, as their ability to reason and to use discernment has been disabled and distorted in service to the psychic pathogen which they carry."
Author: Paul Levy

35. "The self is the class (not the collection) of the experiences (or autopsychological states). The self does not belong to the expression of the basic experience, but is constructed only on a very high level."
Author: Rudolf Carnap

36. "Do one of three things.One,go find a wailing wall and feel sorry for yourselves.Two,go psycho and start bombing-but this will only swing people to the right.Three,learn a lesson.Go home,organize, build power and at the next convention, you be the delegatepos"
Author: Saul D. Alinsky

37. "God must feel the same at the end of a long day. Stop trying to make Me happy with all that ritual up and down, all the good works and psychic genuflecting. All the good works in the world will not bring you and closer to Me. Stand still. Let Me look at you and find Myself reflected. Maybe for a brief moment, you thought it was all about you, but surprise, Creation. It is all about Me."
Author: Sheri Holman

38. "Yes, he's a good boy. Never been in trouble at school and he's on the honor roll. Captain of the football team. All-around psycho serial killer who hides bodies in the fridge whenever his parents go out of town. (Nick)I also eat babies for breakfast and torture small animals for fun. My therapist says I'm making real progress though. (Caleb)"
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

39. "How do we account for this paradox that the absence of Law universalizes prohibition ... The psychoanalytic name for this obscene injunction for this obscene call, ENJOY, is superego. The problem today is not how to get rid of your inhibitions and to be able to spontaneously enjoy. The problem is how to get rid of this injunction to enjoy. Zizek! (the documentary)"
Author: Slavoj Žižek

40. "Art always penetrates the particular fissures in one's psychic life."
Author: Stephen Greenblatt

41. "Before drifting away entirely, he found himself reflecting---not for the first time---on the peculiarity of adults. Thet took laxatives, liquor, or sleeping pills to drive away their terrors so that sleep would come, and their terrors were so tame and domestic: the job, the money, what the teacher will think if I can't get Jennie nicer clothes, does my wife still love me, who are my friends. They were pallid compared to the fears every child lies cheek and jowl with in his dark bed, with no one to confess to in hope of perfect understanding but another child. There is no group therapy or psychiatry or community social services for the child who must cope with the thing under the bed or in the cellar every night, the thing which leers and capers and threatens just beyond the point where vision will reach. The same lonely battle must be fought night after night and the only cure is the eventual ossification of the imaginary faculties, and this is called adulthood."
Author: Stephen King

42. "I love people, watching people interact. It's a lot of psychology. We learn about ourselves by watching other people's lives on the screen."
Author: Tatiana Maslany

43. "In becoming an Irishman, Patrick wedded his world to theirs, his faith to their life…Patrick found a way of swimming down to the depths of the Irish psyche and warming and transforming Irish imagination – making it more humane and more noble while keeping it Irish." (161)"
Author: Thomas Cahill

44. "When anxiety becomes problematic, most people try vainly to think their way out of trouble. But worry has its roots in the reptilian brain, minimally responsive to will. As a wise psychoanalyst once remarked of the autonomic nervous system (which carries the outgoing fear messages from the reptilian brain), "It's so far from the head it doesn't even know there is a head." (49)"
Author: Thomas Lewis

45. "The road, more than simply a system of regulations and designs, is a place where many millions of us, with only loose parameters for how to behave, are thrown together daily in a kind of massive petri dish in which all kinds of uncharted, little-understood dynamics are at work. There is no other place where so many people from different walks of life--different ages, races, classes, religions, genders, political preferences, lifestyle choices, levels of psychological stability--mingle so freely."
Author: Tom Vanderbilt

46. "I love the horror genre and the thriller genre, so I've got no problem with playing a psycho."
Author: Valorie Curry

47. "He bends over to untie his shoes. "So, have you been ostracized from your little crowd of devotees?""No," I say automatically. Then I add, "Maybe. But they aren't my devotees.""Please. They're like the Cult of Four."I can't help but laugh. "Jealous? Wish you had a Cult of Psychopaths to call your very own?"
Author: Veronica Roth

48. "In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as delusion of reprieve. The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute. No one could yet grasp the fact that everything would be taken away. all we possessed, literally, was our naked existence."
Author: Viktor E. Frankl

49. "Sculley began to believe that Jobs's mercurial personality and erratic treatment of people were rooted deep in his psychological makeup, perhaps the reflection of a mild bipolarity."
Author: Walter Isaacson

50. "The attitude of physiological psychology to sensations and feelings, considered as psychical elements, is, naturally, the attitude of psychology at large."
Author: Wilhelm Wundt

Psych Quotes Pictures