Psychology Quotes – Insights and Reflections

"You can be scared - but you can't depend on it."

Unbekannt

"Ideas are easy. Implementation is difficult."

Guy Kawasaki

"The starting point of all success is desire."

Napoleon Hill

"Politicians who want to stay in power have to keep the voters happy, even though the election itself is only symbolic. But it is the central ritual of the democratic theater state. After all, it is no longer about substantive decisions, but only about the confirmation or replacement of political figureheads, who are legitimized by the fact that citizens are allowed to perform this ritual. This symbolically reinforces the fiction of popular sovereignty on which modern constitutional states are founded. In this way, and not through substantive decisions, elections contribute to its stabilization."

Wolfgang Reinhard

"Children must learn how to think, not what to think."

Margaret Mead

"Most people prefer to believe their leaders are just and fair even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which they live is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of a corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all."

Michael Rivero

"Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road."

Voltaire

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason."

Thomas Paine

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

Joseph Goebbels

"Let us be clear: we are not criticizing practical tolerance, which is exercised towards individuals, but rather theoretical tolerance, which claims to be applied to ideas and grants all ideas the same rights. This would logically imply a radical skepticism. We cannot help noticing that, like all propagandists, the apostles of tolerance, truth to tell, are very often the most intolerant of men. This is what has in fact happened, and it is strangely ironical : those who wished to overthrow all dogma have created for their own use, we will not say a new dogma, but a caricature of dogma, which they have succeeded in imposing on the western world in general; in this way there have been established, under the pretext of "freedom of thought," the most chimerical beliefs that have ever been seen at any time, under the form of these different idols, of which we have just singled out some of the more important."

René Guénon

"Being "awake" isn't cool. It means having to dumb down 98% of your conversations every day so you don't sound like a lunatic."

Dave Chappelle

"This is about: What is actually best for children and young people? And how do they get their education and how do they become citizens? Because that is also the goal of our schooling, that I am an educated person who can also fulfill my civic duties and for that I need appropriate behavior and I learn that not only explicitly through knowledge, but also implicitly by practicing a state on a small scale, namely at school."

Anita Hofmann

"Your future depends on the goodwill of a small elite. Maybe there is goodwill for a few decades. But in a time of crisis – like climate catastrophe – it would be very tempting, and easy, to toss you overboard."

Yuval Noah Harari

"Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed."

Friedrich Nietzsche

"No political event or circumstance can be evaluated without the knowledge of The Vatican's part in it. And no significant world situation exists in which The Vatican does not play an important explicit or implicit role."

Avro Manhattan

"The worst and most dangerous slavery is that which people no longer feel because they have become accustomed to it."

Franz von Holtzendorff

"The highest conceivable degree of lying is reached when judgment between truth and falsehood ceases and the liar believes his own lie and is indignant that others place doubt in his words."

Franz von Holtzendorff

"Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief."

Frantz Fanon