Gordon Allport Quotes & Sayings

Life is too short so we must generalize. — Gordon Allport

Since we think about ourselves so much of the time, it is comforting to assume ... that we really know the score ... [But] this is not an easy assignment. [As] Santayana wrote, 'Nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness to see one's equation written out.' — Gordon Allport

Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are not reversible when exposed to new knowledge. — Gordon Allport

The specific goals we set for ourselves are almost always subsidiary to our long range intentions. A good parent, a good neighbour, a good citizen, is not good because his specific goals are acceptable, but because his successive goals are ordered to a dependable and socially desirable set of values. (1947) — Gordon Allport

Reason adapts impulses and beliefs into the real world; rationalization, on the other hand, adapts the concept of reality to the impulses and beliefs of the individual. Reasoning discovers the true cause of our acts, rationalization finds good reasons for justifying our acts. — Gordon Allport

Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and "patriotism" ... Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots. — Gordon Allport

Personality is and does something ... It is what lies behind specific acts and within the individual — Gordon Allport

The dog [in Pavlov's experiments] does not continue to salivate whenever it hears a bell unless sometimes at least an edible offering accompanies the bell. But there are innumerable instances in human life where a single association, never reinforced, results in the establishment of a life-long dynamic system. An experience associated only once with a bereavement, an accident, or a battle, may become the center of a permanent phobia or complex, not in the least dependent on a recurrence of the original shock. — Gordon Allport

Thwarted lives have the most character-conditioned hate — Gordon Allport

The mature religious sentiment is ordinarily fashioned in the workshop of doubt. — Gordon Allport

There is a story of an Oxford student who once remarked, "I despise all Americans, but have never met one I didn't like." — Gordon Allport

The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer. Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better problems. — Gordon Allport

If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying. But no man can tell another what this purpose is. Each must find out for himself, and must accept the responsibility that his answer prescribes. If he succeeds he will continue to grow in spite of all indignities. — Gordon Allport

People who are aware of, and ashamed of, their prejudices are well on the road to eliminating them. — Gordon Allport

The theist is persuaded that while nothing that contradicts science is likely to be true, still nothing that stops with science can be the whole truth. — Gordon Allport

If a person is capable of rectifying his erroneous judgments in the light of new evidence he is not prejudiced. Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are reversible when exposed to new knowledge. A prejudice, unlike a simple misconception, is actively resistant to all evidence that would unseat it. We tend to grow emotional when a prejudice is threatened with contradiction. Thus the difference between ordinary prejudgments and prejudice is that one can discuss and rectify a prejudgment without emotional resistance. — Gordon Allport