2098 Quotations Found

My pain may be the reason for somebody’s laugh. But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody’s pain.

Author: Charlie Chaplin | Subject: Personal Improvement

If you are defensive, you’re obsessed with being right. If you are open, you’re obsessed with getting it right.

Author: Andrew McAfee | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Seek the company of those who search for truth. Run from those who have found it.

Author: Andrew McAfee | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement

For us, ultra-social human beings, all you need to do to maintain a culture is put in place the pain of social exclusion. Follow the norms, and if you don’t, we’re not going to beat you to a pulp. We’re just going to exclude you. That is legitimately and truly painful to human beings. That’s the glue that holds human cultures together, is that threat … [ Read more ]

Author: Andrew McAfee | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships, Sociology | Anthropology

Don’t spend too much time in the wrong room because you aren’t willing to admit you chose the wrong door.

Author: Jeff Blum | Subject: Personal Improvement

We can’t choose where we come from, but we can choose where we are going.

Author: Stephen Chbosky | Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower | Subjects: Change, Concepts, Life & Society, Personal Improvement

We accept the love we think we deserve.

Author: Stephen Chbosky | Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower | Subjects: Love, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships

There are two ways to measure how you are doing: internally or externally. Most of our growth comes from internal measurement, while most problems stem from external comparison.

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subject: Personal Improvement

Young people can also be remarkably clannish, and cruel in their exclusion of all those who are “different,” in skin color or cultural background, in tastes and gifts, and often in such petty aspects of dress and gesture as have been temporarily selected as the signs of an in-grouper or out-grouper. It is important to understand (which does not mean condone or participate in) such … [ Read more ]

Author: Erik Erikson | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships, Sociology | Anthropology

The early process of differentiation between inside and outside [is] the origin of projection and introjection which remain some of our deepest and most dangerous defense mechanisms. In introjection we feel and act as if an outer goodness had become an inner certainty. In projection, we experience an inner harm as an outer one: we endow significant people with the evil which actually is in … [ Read more ]

Author: Erik Erikson | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Capitalism has a way of hijacking our culture’s best ideas. Regardless of the domain, industry turns almost every promising movement into a product.

Author: Sean Illing | Source: Vox | Subjects: Consumerism, Economics | Economy, Life & Society

You are just as likely to solve a problem by being unconventional and determined as by being brilliant.

Author: James Dyson | Subjects: Concepts, Creativity and Innovation, Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

Our own choices often affect outcomes beyond their direct impact through signaling effects that reveal information about our own abilities, beliefs, and intentions. In turn, we are often motivated to perform specific actions in order to affect how we are perceived by others and how we build a reputation.

Authors: Dirk Sliwka, Michael Spence, Timo Vogelsang | Source: Harvard Business Review (HBR) | Subjects: Action | Accomplishment, Psychology | Behavior

Most voters are partisans first and democrats second: Only about 13.1 percent of our respondents are willing to defect from a co-partisan candidate for violating democratic principles when the price of doing so is voting against their own party.

Authors: Matthew H. Graham, Milan W. Svolik | Source: The New York Times | Subject: Politics & Public Policy

Motivated ignorance differs from the more familiar concept of rational ignorance in that ignorance is motivated by the anticipated costs of possessing knowledge, not acquiring it. That is, it is not simply that the benefits of accurate political knowledge may be less than the cost of attaining it and thus not worth pursuing but that the costs of having accurate information exceed the benefits.

When expressed … [ Read more ]

Author: Gary C. Jacobson | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Facts | Bias, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

Author: William James | Subjects: Action | Accomplishment, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

In 1944, best-selling author and scholar C.S. Lewis delivered the Memorial Lecture entitled, The Inner Ring, at Kings College in London. His speech focused on the innate human desire to belong and the extent to which we will strive to be included, even in groups that don’t serve our highest good. Lewis warned that our desire to belong could unwittingly lead us to actions that … [ Read more ]

Authors: Alaina Love, C.S. Lewis | Source: SmartBrief | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Sociology | Anthropology

Human ethics based upon love and personal sympathy only have contributed to narrow the comprehension of the moral feeling as a whole. It is not love to my neighbour — whom I often do not know at all — which induces me to seize a pail of water and to rush towards his house when I see it on fire; it is a far wider, … [ Read more ]

Author: Peter Kropotkin | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Ethics | Integrity | Morality, Life & Society, Love, Psychology | Behavior

Anti-Semitism itself is a conspiracy theory: a story about a tiny, malign group that masterminds world events, from the killing of Jesus to the creation of capitalism (and—never mind the contradiction—the spread of communism). Anti-Semitism differs in this respect from racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and homophobia. Those other bigotries are founded on contempt. Anti-Semitism, like all forms of conspiracism, is founded on paranoia. Which is why … [ Read more ]

Author: David Frum | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Prejudice and Stereotype, Psychology | Behavior, Race Relations

Patience is not passive, on the contrary, it is concentrated strength.

Author: Bruce Lee | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior