200 Positive Psychology Quotes On Love, Life & human behavior
Famous Psychology Quotes
“Becoming is better than being.” —Carol S. Dweck
“Happiness is the only thing that multiplies when you share it.” —Albert Schweitzer
“When we are open to new possibilities, we find them. Be open and skeptical of everything.” —Todd Kashdan
“Genuine feelings cannot be produced, nor can they be eradicated… the body sticks to the facts.” —Alice Miller
“The best way to find out whether you’re on the right path? Stop looking at the path.” —Marcus Buckingham
“It is not primarily our physical selves that limit us but rather our mindset about our physical limits.” —Ellen J. Langer
“Every person on this earth is full of great possibilities that can be realized through imagination, effort, and perseverance.” —Scott Barry Kaufmann
“Happiness is not out there for us to find. The reason that it’s not our there is that it’s inside us.” —Sonja Lyubomirsky
“For happy people, time is ‘filled and planned.’ For unhappy people, time is unfilled, open and uncommitted; they postpone things and are inefficient.” —Michael Argyle
“Everything can be taken from a man, but the last of the human freedoms: to choose one’s attitudes in any given set of circumstances.” —Viktor Frankl
“We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.” —Virginia Satir
“Be content with what you have. Rejoice in how things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking the whole world belongs to you.” —Lao Tzu
“It’s more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly light-hearted. Yet everyone takes the happy person for granted.” —Gretchen Rubin
“The truth is, bad things don’t affect us as profoundly as we expect them to. That’s true of good things, too. We adapt very quickly to either.” —Daniel Gilbert
“When we encounter an unexpected challenge of threat, the only way to save ourselves is to hold on tight to the people around us and not let go.” —Shawn Achor
“Probably the biggest insight… is that happiness is not just a place, but also a process. Happiness is an ongoing process of fresh challenges, and it takes the right attitudes and activities to continue to be happy.” —Ed Diener
“Compassion does not render people tearful idlers, moral weaklings, or passive onlookers; but individuals who will take on the pain of others, even when given the chance to skip out on such difficult action or in anonymous conditions.” —Dacher Keltner
Deep Quotes About Psychology
“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” —Noam Chomsky
“The brain is wider than the sky.” —Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
“Much learning does not teach understanding.” —Heraclitus (544-483 B.C.)
“Great spirits have often overcome violent opposition from mediocre minds.” —Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
“Education survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.” —B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)
“We know what we are but not what we may be.” —Ophelia in Hamlet
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” — Shakespeare (Hamlet)
“I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 things that do not work.” —Thomas Edison (1847-1931)
“There is in every child at every stage a new miracle of vigorous unfolding.” —Erik Erikson (1902-1994)
“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” —Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
“The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.” —Stanley Milgram (1933-1984)
“I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.” —Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
“We are so made, that we can only derive intense enjoyment from a contrast and only very little from a state of things.” —Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
“Don’t become a mere recorder of facts, but try to penetrate the mystery of their origin.” —Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” —William James (1842-1910)
Inspirational Psychology Quotes
“The brain is wider than the sky.” —Emily Dickinson
“Great spirits have often overcome violent opposition from mediocre minds.” —Albert Einstein
“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.” —Skinner
“I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 things that do not work.” —Thomas Edison
“Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.” —James
“When I look at the world I’m pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.” —Rogers
“When we are open to new possibilities, we find them. Be open and skeptical of everything.” —Todd Kashdan
“The best way to find out whether you’re on the right path? Stop looking at the path.” —Marcus Buckingham
“When I look at the world I’m pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.” —Carl Rogers
“I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.” —Abraham Lincoln
“The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.” —Carl Rogers
“Every person on this earth is full of great possibilities that can be realized through imagination, effort, and perseverance.” —Scott Barry Kaufmann
“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” —Maslow
“Be content with what you have. Rejoice in how things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking the whole world belongs to you.” —Lao Tzu
“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.” —Ellis
Psychology Quotes About Love
“Love and work are to people what water and sunshine are to plants.” —Jonathan Haidt, Positive Psychologist, Expert in Psychology of Morality, Author of The Happiness Hypothesis
“Love is that micro-moment of warmth and connection that you share with another living being.” —Barbara L. Fredrickson, Positive Psychologist, author of Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection
“We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.” —B.F. Skinner
“Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are. I’d rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not.” —Kurt Cobain, Guitarist, Singer, Songwriter at the grunge-rock band Nirvana
“We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.” —Virginia Satir, Humanistic and Existential Psychologist, Mother of Family Therapy, author of Your Many Faces: The First Step to Being Loved
Psychology Says Quotes
Psychology Says: Weak people revenge. Strong people forgive. Intelligent people ignore.
Psychology says: people who do not understand themselves have a craving for understanding.
Psychology says: the desire to sleep a lot may reveal a strong feeling of loneliness..
Psychology says: If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.
Psychology says: A person’s personality develops as a result of interactions and relationships with others.
Psychology Says: Usually the people with the best advice are the ones with the most problems.
Psychology Says: when someone appears in your dreams, it’s because that person misses you…!!! – Ravi Bhargav
Psychological Fact: If a guy stands with his legs apart while talking to a girl, it means he likes her.
Psychology says: you realize you love someone when you want them to be happy, even when it’s not with you.
Psychology says: Every 10 years, you literally become a new person. Our desires, wants and need change every 10 years.
Psychology says: staying quitte doesn’t mean you’ve got nothing to say. It means you don’t think they’re ready to hear your thoughts.
Psychology says: There is no point keeping friends or a significant other you can’t trust. Dishonesty is a deal breaker in any relationship.
Psychology says: Psychology claims that if two past lovers can remain just friends, its either they are still in love, or never were.
“Speaker says psychology has commandeered “everything hard” and partitioned it from Scripture with the assumption that its causes are biological” —Edward T. Welch
“One thing on psychology, which we’ve always known, is that every investor says they’re long-term – and they are until the market takes a hit.” —Steve Forbes
Psychology says: When a person is attracted to another person, their speech and mannerisms will slowly converge to match the object of their affections as a way to gain acceptance.
“We must reverse this psychology (of needing guns for home defense). WE can do it by passing a law that says anyone found in possession a handgun except a legitimate officer of the law goes to jail-period!” —Carl T. Rowan
“Oh! This’ll impress you – I’m actually in the Abnormal Psychology textbook. Obviously my family is so proud. Keep in mind though, I’m a PEZ dispenser and I’m in the abnormal Psychology textbook. Who says you can’t have it all?” —Carrie Fisher
“The most bizarre demographics come up to me. Men in their 50s come up to me and are like, “Alison is my favorite. I hated her at first, and now I love her.” I don’t know what that says about people’s psychology.” —Tatiana Maslany
Psychology says: people think a soulmate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.
“There is an important idea in psychology: The ‘just world theory,’ which says that it is very important for us to convince ourselves that the world is just and things happen for a reason. That there is some elemental fairness in everything, which creates the illusion of justice.” —Malcolm Gladwell
“Was she terrifyingly beautiful? Was she so ignorant she didn’t deserve the truth? Was she also a liar and thus it was something they did together? I don’t believe in psychology; which says everything you do is because of yourself. That is so untrue. We are social animals, and everything we do is because of other people, because we love them, or because we don’t.” —Miranda July
“Everyone who has been to an Olympics says expect the unexpected. That kind of psychology games does go on, so I’m kind of expecting things to happen but I don’t know who from. I think it’s kind of silly but I’m prepared for it. I’d probably just laugh it off because it means that they are afraid of racing me, so it’s like a huge compliment.” —Libby Trickett
In the West the whole Western tradition of religion and psychology propounds, preaches, and persuades people to have strong egos – because unless you have a strong ego, how can you survive? Life is a struggle; if you are egoless you will be destroyed. Then who will resist? Who will fight? Who will compete? And life is a continuous competition. Western psychology says: Attain to the ego, be strong in it.” —Rajneesh
“This and countless later experiences working in and around the world of “shrinks” and the mentally ill has led me to the conclusion that over interpretation of human psychology can be inadvisable. My favorite Freud joke has him sitting in his gentlemen’s club in Vienna after dinner, enjoying a cigar. A hostile colleague wanders up and says, “That’s a big, fat, long cigar, Professor Freud,” to which Freud replies, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” —Oliver James
“Our stories may not always be pleasant as they’re being lived. They can in fact be just the opposite, acquiring a warm hue only in retrospect. “I think this boils down to a philosophical question rather than a psychological one,” Tom Gilovich, a professor of psychology at Cornell, tells me. “Should you value moment-to-moment happiness more than retrospective evaluations of your life?” He says he has no answer for this, but the example he offers suggests a bias.” —Jennifer Senior
“Even when alternative views are clearly wrong, being exposed to them still expands our creative potential. In a way, the power of dissent is the power of surprise. After hearing someone shout out an errant answer, we work to understand it, which causes us to reassess our initial assumptions and try out new perspectives. “Authentic dissent can be difficult, but it’s always invigorating,” [Charlan] Nemeth [a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley] says. “It wakes us right up.” —Jonah Lehrer
“There is a growing body of work coming out of psychology and cognitive science that says you have no clue why you act the way you do, choose the things you choose, or think the thoughts you think. Instead, you create narratives, little stories to explain away why you gave up on that diet, why you prefer Apple over Microsoft, why you clearly remember it was Beth who told you the story about the clown with the peg leg made of soup cans when it was really Adam, and it wasn’t a clown.” —David McRaney
“God is not just the starting point of your life; he is the source of it. To discover your purpose in life you must turn to God’s Word, not the world’s wisdom. You must build your life on eternal truths, not pop psychology, success-motivation, or inspirational stories. The Bible says, it’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.” —Rick Warren
“They all know the truth, that there are only three subjects worth talking about. At least here in these parts,” he says, “The weather, which, as they’re farmers, affects everything else. Dying and birthing, of both people and animals. And what we eat – this last item comprising what we ate the day before and what we’re planning to eat tomorrow. And all three of these major subjects encompass, in one way or another, philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, the physical sciences, history, art, literature, and religion. We get around to sparring about all that counts in life but we usually do it while we’re talking about food, it being a subject inseparable from every other subject. It’s the table and the bed that count in life. And everything else we do, we do so we can get back to the table, back to the bed.”— Marlena De Blasi
“May there not be some subconscious jealousy that motivates our reactions to other people? Why do we eat chocolate sundaes when we know that we should reduce? Are we free from the influence of parental training? The Scriptures say, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Parental training and all education proceed on the assumption that the will is not free, but can be trained, motivated, and directed. Finally, beyond both physiology and psychology there is God. Can we be sure that he is not directing our choices? Do we know that we are free from his grace? The Psalm says, “Blessed is the man whom you choose and cause to approach you.” Is it certain that God has not caused us to choose to approach him? Can we set a limit to God’s power? Can we tell how far it extends and just where it ends? Are we outside his control?”—Gordon H. Clark
Psychology Quotes on Life
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.” —Marcus Aurelius
“Life can show up no other way than that way in which you perceive it.” —Neale Donald Walsch
“A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.” —Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Positive Psychologist, Father of “Flow”
“We can regret less and be grateful for what is good in life.” —Barry Schwartz, Social Psychologist, Author of The Paradox of Choice
“Life doesn’t make any sense without interdependence. We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for us all.” —Erik Erikson
“Once you start making the effort to ‘wake yourself up’—that is, be more mindful in your activities—you suddenly start appreciating life a lot more.” —Robert Biswas-Diener
“Discussing positive experiences leads to heightened well-being, increased overall life satisfaction, and even more energy.” —Nathaniel M. Lambert, Associate Editor of The Journal of Positive Psychology
“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it.” —Daniel Kahneman, Psychologist, Economist, Winner of 2002 Nobel in Economics
“If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be unhappy for the rest of your life.” —Abraham Maslow
“The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.” —Soren Kierkegaard
“Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.” —Carl Jung, Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst, Founder of Analytical Psychology
“If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.” —Abraham Maslow, Humanistic and Positive Psychologist, the proponent of The Hierarchy of Needs
“Once you start making the effort to “wake yourself up” – that is, be more mindful in your activities – you suddenly start appreciating life.” —Robert Biswas-Diener, Positive Psychologist, co-author of Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth
“The aim of positive psychology is to catalyze a change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life. — Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology
“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.” —Ellis
“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.” —Victor Frankl
“Life isn’t is about having, it’s about being. You could surround yourself with all that money can buy, and you’d still be as miserable as a human can be. I know people with perfect bodies who don’t have half the happiness I’ve found. … The “if I just had X, I would be happy” syndrome is a mass delusion. When you look for happiness in mere objects, they are never enough. Look around. Look within.” —Nick Vujicic, A world-famous speaker born with Tetra-amelia Syndrome
Psychology Quotes about Personality
“All too often our personality is nothing more than psychological clothing that we wear to hide our true self from the world.” —Teal Swan
“Appearances makes impressions but it is the personality that makes an impact.”
“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” —Carl Fung
“Personality is an understanding of the true form of yourself without limitations.” —Dr. Naoise O’Reilly
“A person’s personality develops as a result of interactions and relationships with others.”
“Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we’ve turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.” —Susan Cain, Writer, Lecturer, author of the international bestseller Quiet: The Power of Introverts
Funny Quotes about Psychology
“I think Politics come out of Psychology.” —Bruce Springsteen
“Psychology helps to measure the probability that an aim is attainable.” —Edward Thorndike
“The science that tells you what you already know, using words you cannot understand.”
“Behavioral Psychology is the science of pulling habits out of rats.” —Douglas Busch
“I get people to truly accept themselves unconditionally, whether or not their therapist or anyone loves them.” —Albert Ellis
“Health isn’t just about a diet. It’s also about a way of thinking and a way of being.” —Katrina Mayer
“What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree.” —Sigmund Freud
“Studying psychology is fun because you’re always looking ofr the same things I think a writer should be looking for, which is the story behind the story.” —Chris Cleave
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” —Viktor E. Frankl
Positive Psychology Quotes
“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” —Paul Romer, Economist, Co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.” —Sigmund Freud, Austrian neurologist, Founder of Psychoanalysis
“Hope has proven a powerful predictor of outcome in every study we’ve done so far.” —Charles R. Snyder, Positive Psychologist.
“We need each other. The sooner we learn that, it is better for us all.” —Erik Erikson, Developmental Psychologist, and Psychoanalyst
“Denial is a useful defense mechanism until it’s not.” —Rosalind Kaplan, Formerly practiced Internal Medicine for 30 years. Presently teaches Medical Humanities
“We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.” —Chuck Palahniuk, Novelist, author of the award-winning novel Fight Club
“Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.” —Edward de Bono, Physician, Psychologist, Originator of the phrase, concept, and author of “Lateral Thinking”
“While some pain is probably inevitable in all relationships, successful couples are usually the ones who are able to forgive.” —Ilona Boniwell, Positive Psychologist, co-author of Live Happy
“Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous.” —Brené Brown, a research professor who has spent two decades studying Courage, Vulnerability, Guilt, Shame, author of Rising Strong
“The difference between misery and happiness depends on what we do with our attention.” —Sharon Salzberg, Teacher of Buddhist and Mindfulness Meditation, author of Loving Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness
“Happiness is not out there for us to find. The reason that it’s not out there is that it’s inside us.” —Sonja Lyubomirsky, Positive Psychologist, author of The How of Happiness
“Genuine feelings cannot be produced, nor can they be eradicated. We can only repress them, delude ourselves, and deceive our bodies. The body sticks to the facts.” —Alice Miller, Psychologist, Psychoanalyst, Philosopher
“Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” —Lao Tzu, Ancient Chinese philosopher, founder of Taoism
“Compassion is one of the few things we can practice that will bring…happiness to our lives.” —Dalai Lama, Spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, author of How to See Yourself As You Really Are
“Happiness, not money or prestige, should be regarded as the ultimate currency — the currency by which we take the measure of our lives.” —Tal Ben-Shahar, Positive Psychologist, author of The Joy of Leadership
“It is not primarily our physical selves that limit us but rather our mindset about our physical limits.” —Ellen J. Langer, Positive Psychologist, author of Counterclockwise: A Proven Way to Think Yourself Younger and Healthier
“For happy people, time is ‘filled and planned’. For unhappy people time is unfilled, open, and uncommitted; they postpone things and are inefficient.” —Michael Argyle, Foremost Thinker in Social Psychology, Author of The Psychology of Happiness
“Happy marriages are based on a deep friendship, mutual respect, and enjoyment of each others’ company.” —John Gottman, Researcher, Clinician. Has worked over four decades on Divorce Prediction and Marital Stability, co-author of The Man’s Guide To Women
“If positive psychology teaches us anything, it is that all of us are a mixture of strengths and weaknesses. No one has it all, and no one lacks it all.” —Christopher Peterson, Positive Psychologist, author of A Primer in Positive Psychology
“What stress really does, though, is deplete willpower, which diminishes your ability to control those emotions.” —Roy F. Baumeister, Social Psychologist, Works on social rejection, sex differences, self-control, self-esteem, motivation, aggression, and free-will, author of Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty
“Follow your dreams. Figure out where you’d like to be, what you would like to be doing, and then figure out what you need to do to get there.” —Kennon Sheldon, Positive Psychologist studying Motivation, Goals, Wellbeing, author of Stability of Happiness
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” —Viktor Frankl, Logotherapy founder, a holocaust survivor, author of Man’s Search For Meaning
“Gratitude … goes far beyond saying ‘thank you.’ When we are grateful, we affirm that a source of goodness exists in our lives.” —Robert Emmons, Positive Psychologist, Editor-In-Chief of Journal of Positive Psychology, World’s Foremost Researcher on Gratitude, author of Words of Gratitude
“As for the future, it remains unwritten. Anything can happen, and often we are wrong. The best we can do with the future is to prepare and savor the possibilities of what can be done in the present.” —Todd Kashdan, Positive Psychologist, author of Curious? Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life
Child Psychology Quotes
“If I wasn’t doing modeling, I’d like to study child psychology.” —Shanina Shaik
“Child psychology and child psychiatry cannot be reformed. They must be abolished.” —Thomas Szasz
“There is in every child at every stage a new miracle of vigorous unfolding.” —Erik Erikson (1902-1994)
“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” —James A. Baldwin
“If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society.” —Jean Piaget
“Child psychology and animal psychology are of relatively slight importance, as compared with the sciences which deal with the corresponding physiological problems of ontogeny and phylogeny.” —Wilhelm Wundt
“I was a physical education major with a child psychology minor at Temple, which means if you ask me a question about a child’s behavior, I will advise you to tell the child to take a lap.” —Bill Cosby
“As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know.” —Carl Jung
“I want to get back to education. When I was in college I paid attention to child psychology portions of our psychology classes. I watch other people work with babies. And I saw the baby as developing like a computer and it intrigued me in my life. I wanted to do that.” —Steve Wozniak
“Too-broad questions, such as, “What’s on your mind?” are apt to be answered “nothing” nearly one hundred percent of the time. Be careful of slipping into “psycho-speak,” however. Kids pick up instantly your attempt at being a pseudo-shrink. Most resent it and are apt to tune out anything that sounds like you’re reading a script from the latest child-psychology text.” —Marge M. Kennedy
Trading Psychology Quotes
“Use stop-losses to protect your funds. When the stop loss is triggered, act immediately — don’t hesitate.”
“Investing involves dealing with probabilities — not certainties. No one can predict the market correctly every time. Avoid gamblers’ logic.”
“Concentrate on the technical aspects rather than on the money. If your trades are technically correct, the profits will follow. “
“Forex trading requires the learning the type of skills that people just aren’t simply used to learning – Mental Skills.” —Mark Douglas
“Focus on the longer time frames and do not try to catch every short-term fluctuation. The most profitable trades are in catching the large trends.”
“Wait for the right market conditions before trading. There are times when it is wise to stay out of the market and observe from the sidelines.”
“No man ever reached to excellence in any one art or profession without having passed through the slow and painful process of study and preparation.” —Mark Douglas
“You don’t need to know what’s going to happen next to make money. Anything can happen. Every moment is unique, meaning every edge and outcome is truly a unique experience. The trade either works or it doesn’t.” —Mark Douglas
“The biggest mistake you can make is to hold on to falling stocks, hoping for a recovery. Falling stocks have a habit of declining way below what you expected them to. Eventually you are forced to sell, decimating your capital.”
“I haven’t seen much correlation between good trading and intelligence. Some outstanding traders are quite intelligent, but a few aren’t. Many outstanding intelligent people are horrible traders. Average intelligence is enough. Beyond that, emotional makeup is more important.” —Mark Douglas
“Fundamental analysis creates what I call a “reality gap” between “what should be” and “what is.” The reality gap makes it extremely difficult to make anything but very long-term predictions that can be difficult to exploit, even if they are correct.” —Mark Douglas
“If you increase your position when price goes against you, you are liable to compound your losses. When price starts to move it is likely to continue in that direction. Rather increase your exposure when the market proves you right and moves in your favor.”
“Stay emotionally detached from the market. Avoid getting caught up in the short-term excitement. Screen-watching is a tell-tale sign: if you continually check prices or stare at charts for hours it is a sign that you are unsure of your strategy and are likely to suffer losses.”
“Have the courage of your convictions: Take steps to protect your profits when you see that a trend is weakening, but sit tight and don’t let fear of losing part of your profit cloud your judgment. There is a good chance that the trend will resume its upward climb.”
“Excitement (and fear of missing an opportunity) often persuade us to enter the market before it is safe to do so. After a down-trend a number of rallies may fail before one eventually carries through. Likewise, the emotional high of a profitable trade may blind us to signs that the trend is reversing.”
“Why do you think unsuccessful traders are obsessed with market analysis? They crave the sense of certainty that analysis appears to give them. Although few would admit it, the truth is that the typical trader wants to be right on every single trade. He is desperately trying to create certainty where it just doesn’t exist.” —Mark Douglas
Psychology Quotes On Human Behavior
“Becoming is better than being.” —Carol S. Dweck
“We know what we are but not what we may be.” —Shakespeare
“If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society.” —Jean Piaget
“The truth is, bad things don’t affect us as profoundly as we expect them to. That’s true of good things, too. We adapt very quickly to either.” —Daniel Gilbert
“When we encounter an unexpected challenge of threat, the only way to save ourselves is to hold on tight to the people around us and not let go.” —Shawn Achor
“We are what we are because we have been what we have been, and what is needed for solving the problems of human life and motives is not moral estimates but more knowledge.” —Sigmund Freud
“Compassion does not render people tearful idlers, moral weaklings, or passive onlookers; but individuals who will take on the pain of others, even when given the chance to skip out on such difficult action or in anonymous conditions.” —Dacher Keltner
Psychology Quotes and Sayings
“Introspection is always retrospection.” —Sartre
“Idleness is the parent of psychology.” —Friedrich Nietzsche
“Learn one way; react. Learn many ways; understand.” —Tadeu Dias
“What you are will show in what you do.” —Thomas Edison
“No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience.” —John Locke
“When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.” —Plato
“Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.” —Mason Cooley
“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” —William James
“It seems a pity that psychology has destroyed all our knowledge of human nature.”
“It is easier to understand mankind in general than any individual man.” —Francois de la Rochefoucauld
“Seeing ourselves as others see us would probably confirm our worst suspicions about them.” —Franklin P. Adams
“Knowing reality means constructing systems of transformations that correspond, more or less adequately, to reality.” —Jean Piaget
“The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.” —Paul Valery
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitude of mind.” —William James
“Perception is a clash of mind and eye, the eye believing what it sees, the mind seeing what it believes.” —Robert Brault
“The chief difficulty for those who begin the study of scientific psychology is that all men indulge in popular psychology.” —Karl Friedrich Munzinger
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” —Arthur Schopenhauer
“The separation of psychology from the premises of biology is purely artificial, because the human psyche lives in indissoluble union with the body.” —Carl Jung
“But psychology is a trickier field, in which even outstanding authorities have been known to run in circles, ‘describing things which everyone knows in language which no one understands’.” —Raymond Cattell
“Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusions because of its reliance on its memory for vivid anecdotes rather than systematic statistics.” —Steven Pinker
“A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of ”spirit” over matter.” —Susan Sontag
“Hence, wherever we meet with vital phenomena that present the two aspects, physical and psychical there naturally arises a question as to the relations in which these aspects stand to each other.” —Wilhelm Wundt
“Nothing is so dangerous to the progress of the human mind than to assume that our views of science are ultimate, that there are no mysteries in nature, that our triumphs are complete and that there are no new worlds to conquer.” —Humphry Davy
“To the intelligent man with an interest in human nature it must often appear strange that so much of the energy of the scientific world has been spent on the study of the body and so little on the study of the mind.” —Edward Thorndike