The average marriage contract is made by the Child, which understands love as something you feel and not something you do, and which sees happiness as something you pursue rather than a by-product of working toward the happiness of someone other than yourself.
Author: Thomas A. Harris | Subjects: Love, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships
A relationship of intimacy between two people may be thought of as existing independent of the first five ways of time structuring: withdrawal, pastimes, activities, rituals, and games. It is based on the acceptance by both people of the I’m OK – You’re OK position. It rests, literally, in an accepting love where defensive time structuring is made unnecessary. Intimacy is a game-free relationship, since … [ Read more ]
Author: Thomas A. Harris | Subjects: Love, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships
It has been said that blaming your faults on your nature does not change the nature of your faults.
Author: Thomas A. Harris | Subject: Personal Improvement
Elton Trueblood suggests that causes for human behavior lie not only in the past but in man’s ability to contemplate the future, or estimate probabilities. “What is not, influences what is.”
Authors: Elton Trueblood, Thomas A. Harris | Subject: Psychology | Behavior
Reality, for some people, is broader than it is for others, because they have looked more, lived more, read more, experienced more, and thought more.
Authors: M.D., Thomas A. Harris | Subjects: Life & Society, Perception | Observation
Dogma is the enemy of truth and the enemy of persons. Dogma says, “Do not think! Be less than a person.” The ideas enshrined in dogma may include good and wise ideas, but dogma is bad in itself because it is accepted as good without examination.
Authors: M.D., Thomas A. Harris | Subject: Thought | Inquiry
Problem solvers, whether international or hometown, talk incessantly about the “need for a dialogue” without ever considering the need to define terms. …Dialogue, if it is to get us anywhere must be based on agreement of what to examine and an agreement on the words to describe what we observe. Otherwise we simply stumble over words.
Authors: M.D., Thomas A. Harris | Subject: Communication
We can hate evil so much that we forget to love good.
Authors: M.D., Thomas A. Harris | Subject: Good & Evil
The only way to stay a winner is to surround oneself with losers.
Authors: M.D., Thomas A. Harris | Subjects: Action | Accomplishment, Success / Failure
Intimacy is a game-free relationship, since goals are not ulterior. Intimacy is made possible in a situation where the absence of fear makes possible the fullness of perception, where beauty can be seen apart from the utility, where possessiveness is made unnecessary by the reality of possession.
Authors: M.D., Thomas A. Harris | Subjects: Love, Relationships
Herman Melville observed that “a man of true science uses but few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose; whereas the smatterer in science…thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.”
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“I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes” – Walt Whitman
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“There are times,” said Somerset Maugham, “when I look over the various parts of my … [ Read more ]
Author: Thomas A. Harris | Subjects: Excerpts, Psychology | Behavior