Psychologically Quotes & Sayings

The very existence of armaments and great armies psychologically accustoms us to accept the philosophy of militarism. They inevitably increase fear and hate in the world. — Norman Thomas

Calvinist believers were psychologically isolated. Their distance from God could only be precariously bridged, and their inner tensions only partially relieved, by unstinting, purposeful labor. — Max Weber

I survived this torture which left me paralyzed for years. That's what that night was all about, mutilation, more than violence through sex. I really do feel as though I was psychologically mutilated that night and now I'm trying to put the pieces back together again. Through love, not hatred. And through my music. My strength has been to open again, to life, and my victory is the fact that, despite it all, I kept alive my vulnerability. — Tori Amos

Mark Twain was so good with crowds that he became, in competition with singers and dancers and actors and acrobats, one of the most popular performers of his time. It is so unusual, and so psychologically unlikely, too, for a great writer to be a great performer, too ... — Kurt Vonnegut

a perspective gap: when we're not experiencing a psychologically or physically intense state, we dramatically underestimate how much it will affect us. — Adam M. Grant

It seems to me psychologically I'm a Canadian. — Clark Blaise

I'm a walker. I enjoy walking, which I think psychologically expresses my feelings of wanting liberation without exerting myself too much. — Janeane Garofalo

No one likes to feel helpless. We find it psychologically unbearable and inside ourselves we may try to make ourselves part author of our misfortune rather than simply the recipient of it. — Susie Orbach

Shame is internalized when one is abandoned. Abandonment is the precise term to describe how one loses one's authentic self and ceases to exist psychologically. — John Bradshaw

I don't know if it's entirely fair to blame [Dennis Wilson] early death and complete self-destruction on his involvement with Charles Manson, but it was certainly a factor. It affected him psychologically and emotionally. — Karina Longworth

Psychologically, I'm a Roman Baptist. — Samuel Bowers

Activity proneness in the service of an ideology ... leads the individual into an irreversible series of commitments from which is forged an identity to which the individual inevitably becomes strongly attached psychologically. — Edgar Schein

I don't have any romantic views of parenting. Every step of the way it's really hard. It's a dangerous world, physically and psychologically. — Anne Lamott

People think that if you have a huge appetite, then you'll be better at it. But actually, it's how you confront the food that is brought to you. You have to be mentally and psychologically prepared. — Takeru Kobayashi

Individuals need life structure. A life lacking in comprehensible structure is an aimless wreck. The absence of structure breeds breakdown.
Structure provides the relatively fixed points of reference we need. That is why, for many people, a job is crucial psychologically, over and above the paycheck. By making clear demands on their time and energy, it provides an element of structure around which the rest of their lives can be organized. The absolute demands imposed on a parent by an infant, the responsibility to care for an invalid, the tight discipline demanded by membership in a church or, in some countries, a political party - all these may also impose a simple structure on life. — Alvin Toffler

Make no mistake, hiding one's true self away in a closet and creating a facade of heterosexuality is not without its consequences. It may appear to have a degree of safety but from my experience they are very unhealthy places and do all kinds of terrible things to individuals psychologically, emotionally and behaviourally ... to say nothing of projection. The damage of the fear, shame, guilt and self-loathing that exist inside a closet are often reflected unknowingly in the external life of the individual. In or out of the closet; there is a price to pay. Each individual must weigh up the consequences of honesty, openness, secrecy and deception for themselves. Coming out, for most of us, is like an exorcism that releases us of the darkness we have lived in for years and caused us to believe awful things about ourselves. On the other side of the looking glass are freedom, light and life. — Anthony Venn-Brown

I turned everybody on so, psychologically, I guess I was pushing the boundaries creativity. — Jim Capaldi

The achievement of maturity, psychologically speaking, might be said to be the realization and acceptance that we simply cannot live independently from the world, and so we must live within it, with whatever compromises that might entail. — Paul Murray

Confronting information that directly challenges existing beliefs can be psychologically threatening to people, especially if the information challenges their sense of identity. — Rachel Hilary Brown

As long as one is escaping from loneliness, there is no essential difference between the worship of God and addiction to alcohol. Socially, there may be a difference; but psychologically, the man who runs away from himself, from his own emptiness, whose escape is his search for God, is on the same level as the drunkard. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so. — Bertrand Russell

To be psychologically healthy, we have to believe that what we do has some effect on what happens to us. Even if the perception of control is delusional, it usually leads to more productive action than believing that what we do makes no difference. — Albert J. Bernstein

I would start with four fingers of Jack in a thick mug, with a sweating Budweiser back, and by midnight I would be alone at the end of the bar, armed, drunk, and hunched over my glass, morally and psychologically insane. — James Lee Burke

I stay connected in my head. I'm spiritually and psychologically connected to African-Americans. They are my people, and that will never change. — Assata Shakur

I feel any time you enter a dream world it's like you're working out things, it's all inside your mind and you're working it out, be it Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, or the kids in Narnia, they go through this weird journey that's not real, and they're going through this journey psychologically. It's that journey of discovery, of getting onself together, that fantasy and fairy tales are so good at. And while some people still look upon them as completely unrealistic, for me they're more real than most things that are perceived as real. — Tim Burton

When, a year later, the Madagascar project was declared to have become "obsolete," everybody was psychologically, or rather, logically, prepared for the next step: since there existed no territory to which one could "evacuate," the only "solution" was extermination. Not that Eichmann, the truth-revealer for generations to come, ever suspected the existence of such sinister plans. — Hannah Arendt

The beginning of revolutions is psychologically strikingly akin to that of certain relationships: the stress on unity, the sense of omnipotence, the desire to eliminate secrets (with the fear of the opposite soon leading to lover's paranoia and the creation of a secret police). — Alain De Botton

Sometimes players need to gain time on the clock by repeating the position, but most often its purpose is to wear down the opponent psychologically. — Pal Benko

I was fed by the music I listened to as a kid. Hip-hop fed me psychologically, spiritually, politically. I learned from that music. — Saul Williams

If there is no continuity what is there? There is nothing. One is afraid to be nothing. Nothing means not a thing - nothing put together by thought, nothing put together by memory, remembrances, nothing that you can put into words and then measure. There is most certainly, definitely, an area where the past doesn't cast a shadow, where time, the past or the future or the present, has no meaning. We have always tried to measure with words something that we don't know. What we do not know we try to understand and give it words and make it into a continuous noise. And so we clog our brain which is already clogged with past vents, experiences, knowledge. We think knowledge is psychologically of great importance, but it is not. You can't ascend through knowledge; there must be an end to knowledge for the new to be. New is a word for something which has never been before. And that area cannot be understood or grasped by words or symbols: it is there beyond all remembrances. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Make no mistake, our economic system can do no other than destroy everything it encounters. That's what happens when you convert living beings to cash. That conversion, from living trees to lumber, schools of cod to fish sticks, and onward to numbers on a ledger, is the central process of our economic system. Psychologically, it is the central process of our enculturation; we are most handsomely rewarded in direct relation to the manner in which we can help increase the Gross National Product. — Derrick Jensen

Typical things you will see on a to-do list: "Mom" "Bank" "Doctor" "Baby-sitter" "VP Marketing" etc. Looking at these often creates more stress than relief, because, though it is a valuable trigger for something that you've committed to do or decide something about, it still calls out psychologically, "Decide about me!" And if you do not have the energy or focus at the moment to think and decide, it will simply remind you that you are overwhelmed. Stuff — David Allen

It's psychologically a weird experience to be so aware of the fact that the real time of your life is moving much faster than the fictional time you're trying to depict. You start to feel very weighted down sometimes. — Adrian Tomine

More than a decade after our fellow citizens began bedding down on the sidewalks, their problems continue to seem so intractable that we have begun to do psychologically what government has been incapable of doing programmatically. We bring the numbers down
not by solving the problem, but by deciding it's their own damn fault. — Anna Quindlen

Chess is a very tough game, and psychologically a tough game. And of course, chess needs a lot of qualities, human qualities. And so you must have a very strong nervous system, and then you must be well prepared; you must be able to work a lot. — Anatoly Karpov

People die every day, psychologically speaking. Some part of them gets tired. And that small part tries to kill off the entire person. — Ray Bradbury

I have to be invested spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically to do theater. I can't do it to make a living. I have four kids, a couple of grandkids, and two mortgages. — Ruben Santiago-Hudson

I'm not going to rule out running for a second term. But, I think you have to be psychologically prepared to walk away from the job after four years. It's the only way that you cannot be influenced by those special interests. — Dick Murphy

Rather than teasing the buyers, we may blame the society in which they lived for setting up a situation where the purchase of ornate cabinets felt psychologically necessary and rewarding, where respect was dependent on baroque displays. Rather than a tale of greed, the history of luxury could more accurately be read as a record of emotional trauma. It is the legacy of those who have felt pressured by the disdain of others to add an extraordinary amount to their bare selves in order to signal that they too may lay a claim to love. — Alain De Botton

It is an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence those isolated phenomena, seen and felt only by a psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common experience. — H.P. Lovecraft

Routines may include taking a warm bath or a relaxing walk in the evening, or practicing meditation/relaxation exercises. Psychologically, the completion of such a practice tells your mind and body that the day's work is over and you are free to relax and sleep. — Andrew Weil

The implications of the transfer of full sovereignty from separate nations to a World Organization ... Political unification in some sort of World Government will be required ... Even though ... any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable. — Julian Huxley

Dread is a womanish debility in which freedom swoons. Psychologically speaking, the fall into sin always occurs in impotence. But dread is at the same time the most egotistic thing. — Soren Kierkegaard

[Fascism is] psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life ... Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good time," Hitler has said to them, "I offer you struggle, danger, and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet ... We ought not to underrate its emotional appeal. — George Orwell

In the neurotic in whom one sees the collapse of the whole human ideology of God it has also become obvious what this signifies psychologically. This was not explained by Freud's psychoanalysis which only comprehended the destructive process in the patient from his personal history without considering the cultural development which bred this type. — Ernest Becker

Traditionally, marriage involved a kind of bartering, rather than mutual inter-dependence or role sharing. Husbands financially and economically supported wives, while wives emotionally, psychologically and socially supported husbands. He brought home the bacon, she cooked it. He fixed the plumbing, she the psyche. — Bettina Arndt

Washington not only fit the bill physically, he was also almost perfect psychologically, so comfortable with his superiority that he felt no need to explain himself. (As a young man during the French and Indian war he had been more outspoken, but he learned from experience to allow his sheer presence to speak for itself.) While less confident men blathered on, he remained silent, thereby making himself a vessel into which admirers for their fondest convictions, becoming a kind of receptacle for diverse aspirations that magically came together in one man. — Joseph J. Ellis

Fighting for equality is often misunderstood as simply being offered the same terms as men on paper. In many ways we already have that. What we don't have is emancipation: the opportunity to be free of social and external shackles that perpetuate inequality and women's lower position. Women around the world are now demanding more: paid work, a life for their children, but also the right to be listened to, a political voice, direct democracy, and the right to a full civic life. That isn't won by keeping quiet: it's won by physically and psychologically going on strike, by shouting back, and leaning out. — Dawn Foster

It is psychologically very hard to go through life without the justification, and the hope, provided by religion. — Umberto Eco

Women in this country must become revolutionaries. We must refuse to accept the old, the traditional roles and stereotypes ... We must replace the old, negative thoughts about our femininity with positive thoughts and positive action affirming it, and more. But we must also remember that we will be breaking with tradition, and so we must prepare ourselves educationally, economically, and psychologically in order that we will be able to accept and bear with the sanctions that society will immediately impose upon us. — Shirley Chisholm

Thinking scientifically requires the ability to reason abstractly, which itself is at the foundation of all morality. Consider the mental rotation required to implement the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This necessitates one to change positions - to become the other - and then to extrapolate what action X would feel like as the receiver instead of the doer (or as the victim instead of the perpetrator). A case can be made that the type of conceptual ratiocination required for both scientific and moral reasoning not only is linked historically and psychologically, but also that it has been improving over time as we become better at nonconcrete, theoretical reflection. — Michael Shermer

The theory that everyone acts from self-interest, direct or indirect, is psychologically unsound ... Throughout history ... there have been millions of men and women with some sort of Humanist philosophy who have consciously given up their lives for a social ideal. — Corliss Lamont

Finish this lecture, go outside, and unexpectedly get gored by an elephant, and you are going to secrete glucocorticoids. There's no way out of it. You cannot psychologically reframe your experience and decide you did not like the shirt, here's an excuse to throw it out - that sort of thing. — Robert M. Sapolsky

If a Pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically, and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right and, under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign. — Pope Benedict XVI

The 12 years I was in Fleetwood Mac before were not particularly happy years. I was not in a very good place, psychologically, when I left. I didn't have a lot of confidence in what I was doing. — Lindsey Buckingham

What you consent to can only be discovered by an uncritical observation of your reactions to life. Your reactions reveal where you live psychologically; and where you live psychologically, determines how you live here in the outer visible world. — Neville Goddard

If one is physically disabled, one cannot afford to be *psychologically* disabled as well. — Stephen Hawking

At LeakyCon, a young lady asked me how I dealt with bullying. I wasn't able to give her a very good answer, which troubles me. Well, there were lots of shouts of "It gets better" and "Stay strong" and "We love you". But when I put myself back in time to when I was being bullied, none of those things would've helped me. Yes, absolutely it does get better. But when you are being physically and psychologically tortured, it is difficult to remove yourself from the pressingness of the moment at hand. Here's how I dealt with bullying: I cried, I hated myself, I hated my life. I didn't deal with it, I survived it, but I never dealt with it. So here are two tips from someone with lots of experience. 1: It's not about you, it has nothing to do with you, it's about the assholes doing it to you. 2: Your job is not to deal with it, your job is to survive it, which you CAN do because it WILL end. And then yes, it will get better. — Hank Green

What do we need all that for?If a picture is psychologically motivated, if there is truth in the relationship in it, then I think that picture will do good. I firmly believe Rebel Without A Cause is such a picture. — James Dean

Psychologically speaking (I'll only wheel out the amateur psychology just this once, so bear with me), encounters that call up strong physical disgust or revulsion are often in fact projections of our own faults and weaknesses. — Haruki Murakami

Like most people, I'm fascinated by characters who are completely flawed personalities, riven by anguish and doubt, and are psychologically suspect. — Chang-rae Lee

Psychologically, it's always more pleasurable to blame others for our problems than it is to acknowledge our own responsibility. — Barry Eisler

If you want something new in your life, you have to make space for it. I mean that psychologically as well as physically. Take a look at your closet. If you have the kind of closet where you can't fit another thing in there, that might be the reason you don't have more new clothes. If you want a new man in your life, you've got to let go of the one who stopped dating you five years ago. In other words, you need to complete the past in order for the present to show up more fully. — Jack Canfield

The fact that everyone between seventeen and thirty-five or so is liable to be (as Nim put it) "tied down to childbearing," implies that no one is quite so thoroughly "tied down" here as women, elsewhere are likely to be
psychologically or physically. Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally; everybody has the same risk to run or choice to make. Therefore nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I am willing for the participant to commit or not commit himself to the group. If a person wishes to remain psychologically on the sidelines, he has my implicit permission to do so. The group itself may or may not be willing for him to remain in this stance but personally I am willing. One skeptical college administrator said that the main things he had learned was that he could withdraw from personal participation, be comfortable about it, and realize that he would not be coerced. To me, this seemed a valuable learning and one that would make it much more possible for him actually to participate at the next opportunity. Recent reports on his behavior, a full year later, suggest that he gained and changed from his seeming nonparticipation. — Carl R. Rogers

The saints suffered many hardships as well, and many were psychologically challenged, but they had something to fall back on - Jesus Christ. He is there for others as well, but no one is obliged to accept his hand. For intellectuals, the thought of doing so is not just bizarre, it is scary: to reach out to God would be to acknowledge their subordinate status, and that is not something their ego will allow. Surrendering to God is not in their cards. So they suffer. — Bill Donohue

As the young spend less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, physiologically and psychologically and this reduces the richness of human experience we need contact with nature. — Richard Louv

Physically as well as psychologically, Dickinson was the opposite of Adams: tall and gaunt, with a somewhat ashen complexion and a deliberate demeanor that conveyed the confidence of his social standing in the Quaker elite and his legal training at the Inns of Court in London. — Joseph J. Ellis

If you realize that those who do mean things are psychologically ill, your feelings of anger will turn to feelings of pity. — Peace Pilgrim

The scientific revolution proved that there are objective, discernible laws of physical phenomena. Take gravity, for instance. You don't exactly have faith in the law of gravity so much as you just know that the law is the law. Now we are learning that there are objective, discernible laws of non-physical phenomena. These two sets of laws are parallel. Externally, the universe supports our physical survival. Photosynthesis in plants and plankton in the ocean produce oxygen, which we need in order to breathe. Internally the universe also supports our survival. Emotionally and psychologically the internal equivalent to oxygen, what we need in order to survive, is love. And human relationships exist to produce love. — Marianne Williamson

Psychologically, when you've been overweight you want to achieve the polar opposite. — Craig David

Men are psychologically unstable, too prone to emotions; not to be relied upon in moments of crisis.' 'That's — Andrzej Sapkowski

I may have taken someone through the wringer psychologically, but I've never been sinister. — John Mayer

Who isn't frustrated and does not prove it by his actions - if you want to say so? But through art the psychologically maimed may become the most distinguished man of his age. Take Freud for instance. — William Carlos Williams

they feel ignored, unappreciated, and unloved. That's because their context-blind Aspie family members are so poor at empathic reciprocity. As we have learned, we come to know ourselves in relation to others. This doesn't just apply when children are developing self-esteem. Throughout our lifespan, we continue to weave and re-weave the context of our lives, based on the interactions we have with our friends, coworkers, neighbors and loved ones. This is why it is so important for an NT parent/partner to get feedback from their spouse. A smile, a hug, a kind word, a note of encouragement: These are messages that reinforce the NT's self-esteem and contribute to a healthy reciprocity in the relationship. Without these daily reminders from their loved ones, NTs can develop some odd defense mechanisms. One is to become psychologically invisible to others and even to themselves. — Kathy J. Marshack

...the whole universe is contagious if you look at it long enough. Just opening your eyes puts you in front of a mirror, psychologically speaking. Garbage in, garbage out. Or rather, garbage goes in, but you never get rid of it. It just lies there turning to dust and slowly wafting a thin layer of grime on to every other object in your brain. Scraping the gunk off is not only a major challenge, but the chief burden of human existence. that's why I keep things so clean. Otherwise I would see little flecks of [ ] shit everywhere I looked ... — Nell Zink

...people who struggle against tyranny are more psychologically healthy than those who are docile and simply conform to current ways of thinking...there is much evidence that some of the most creative people in history were driven individuals who were terribly unhappy and out of sync with their social context. Creativity itself is a form of deviant behavior that requires individuals to break from usual assumptions and understandings in developing entirely new perspectives and approaches. — David Mechanic

In 1960, in Blackburn v. Alabama, the Court said, "Coercion can be mental as well as physical." In reviewing whether a confession was psychologically coerced by the police, the following factors are crucial: (1) the length of the interrogation, (2) whether it was prolonged in nature, (3) when it took place, day or night, with a strong suspicion around nighttime confessions, and (4) the psychological makeup - intelligence, sophistication, education, and so on - of the suspect. — John Grisham

Let people realize clearly that every time they threaten someone or humiliate or unnecessarily hurt or dominate or reject another human being, they become forces for the creation of psychopathology, even if these be small forces. Let them recognize that every person who is kind, helpful, decent, psychologically democratic, affectionate, and warm, is a psychotheraputic force, even though a small one. — Abraham H. Maslow

Publicity in itself, of whatever nature, connotes a disturbance of the natural equilibrium of a man. Under normal circumstances, the name a human being bears is no more than the band is to a cigar: a means of identification, a superficial, almost unimportant thing that is only loosely related to the real subject, the true ego. In the event of a success the name begins to swell, so to say. It loosens itself from the human being that bears it and becomes a power in itself, a force, an independent thing, an article of commerce, a capital asset; and psychologically again with strong reaction it becomes a force which tends to influence, to dominate, to transform the person who bears it. — Stefan Zweig

An Odonian's goal is positive, not negative. Suffering is dysfunctional, except as a bodily warning against danger. Psychologically and socially it's merely destructive. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I find writing the darker side, writing tragedy, a lot easier than writing happiness. Happiness is just less psychologically compelling, isn't it? — Paula Hawkins

Laughter is spiritual health. And laughter is very unburdening. While you laugh, you can put your mind aside very easily. For a man who cannot laugh the doors of the buddha are closed. To me, laughter is one of the greatest values. No religion has ever thought about it. They have always been insisting on seriousness, and because of their insistence the whole world is psychologically sick. — Rajneesh

Until a radical change takes place and we wipe out all nationalities, all ideologies, all religious divisions, and establish a global relationship - psychologically first, inwardly before organizing the outer - we shall go on with wars. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Every myth is psychologically symbolic. Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors. — Joseph Campbell

Psychologically speaking, far from being worthless, a system is indeed necessary, for any kind of human endeavor. A structure aids in the mind's endeavor of learning. But the moment the mind becomes dependent on the system and starts trusting the system more than the internal faculties of the mind, the very element of education fades away from the system. — Abhijit Naskar

The danger of refusing to reflect upon the psychological dynamics of faith and belief is that what we feel to be self evidently true, for psychological reasons, might be, upon inspection, highly questionable, intellectually or morally. Too often, as we all know, the 'feeling of rightness' trumps sober reflection and moral discernment. Further, we are often unwilling to listen to others until we are, to some degree, psychologically open to persuasion. The Parable of the Sower comes to mind. — Richard Beck

Female adolescence is - universally - an emotionally and psychologically intense period. — Caitlin Flanagan

Philosophically, Romanticism is a crusade to glorify man's existence; psychologically, it is experienced simply as the desire to make life interesting. — Ayn Rand

Value change can change our pathetic capitulation to consumerism, which will help us psychologically as well as environmentally. — James Gustave Speth

Some people have heard of The Method, which originally goes back to Stanislavski ... he gave you six major pointers whereby you became that character and tried to fool your mind psychologically. That's it in a nutshell. Daniel Day Lewis is an example of somebody like that who stays in character between takes. — David Wenham

I think everyone can relate to the werewolf myth - because we've all, as a result of alcohol, drugs, exhaustion, rage, gone off the leash and come to regret it later. I appeal to this psychologically - the unleashed id - but with a biological cause; I'm hopefully making possible supernatural circumstances. — Benjamin Percy

Hugs make you feel psychologically more secure and together. — Leo Buscaglia

Psychologically, the choice "to think or not" is the choice "to focus or not." Existentially, the choice "to focus or not" is the choice "to be conscious or not." Metaphysically, the choice "to be conscious or not" is the choice of life or death. — Ayn Rand

This is a patriarchal truism that most people in our society want to deny. Whenever women thinkers, especially advocates of feminism, speak about the widespread problem of male violence, folks are eager to stand up and make the point that most men are not violent. They refuse to acknowledge that masses of boys and men have been programmed from birth on to believe that at some point they must be violent, whether psychologically or physically, to prove that they are men. — Bell Hooks

You don't need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn't mean you're incapable of real love or that you'll never love anyone else again. It doesn't mean you're morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That's all. Be brave enough to break your own heart. — Cheryl Strayed

the worry habit is reinforcing in the same sense that superstitions are. Since people worry about many things that have a very low probability of actually occurring - a loved one dying in a plane crash, going bankrupt, and the like - there is, to the primitive limbic brain at least, something magical about it. Like an amulet that wards off some anticipated evil, the worry psychologically gets the credit for preventing the danger it obsesses about. The — Daniel Goleman

Ruskin's interest in beauty and in its possession led him to five central conclusions. First, beauty was the result of a number of complex factors that affected the mind both psychologically and visually. Second, humans had an innate tendency to respond to beauty and to desire to possess it. Third, there were many lower expressions of this desire for possession (including, as we have seen, buying souvenirs and carpets, carving one's name on a pillar and taking photographs). Fourth, there was only one way to possess beauty properly, and that was by understanding it, by making oneself conscious of the factors (psychological and visual) responsible for it. And last, the most effective means of pursuing this conscious understanding was by attempting to describe beautiful places through art, by writing about or drawing them, irrespective of whether one happened to have any talent for doing so. — Alain De Botton

By means of meditation, I feel that we have planted dynamite to transcend the world of confusion. So it would be good if you could practice meditation as much as you can, as much as physically and psychologically possible. You could become more clear and sane, and you could also influence the national neurosis in that way. — Chogyam Trungpa

When children are hurt and in pain psychologically, they don't want to be in distress, so when the situation becomes intolerable, they cease to identify with themselves. When they feel the most threatened, they will choose to identify with the person who is the source of their suffering in an attempt to possess that person's strength. — Robert Firestone