Wisdom Quotes

"About what one cannot speak, one must be silent."

"The solution to the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem."

"We must draw a line somewhere, but whether to do so is not a question of philosophy, but of practical life."

"If a lion could speak, we could not understand him."

"The limits of language mean the limits of my world."

"Emotion is simply conditioned bodily response, nothing more mysterious than that."

"Personality is nothing but a collection of learned habits and conditioned responses."

"Instinct is largely a myth; what we call instinct is usually learned behavior operating automatically."

"What we call character is simply the sum of our established habits and learned responses."

"Every problem of human life can be reframed as a problem of conditioned behavior modification."

"The strongest conditioning comes from immediate, consistent consequences following a response."

"The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines his conduct."

"The problem, then, is not that people are obedient, but that people are obedient to authority without examining the content of the authority's commands."

"The critical question is not whether people are good or evil, but under what conditions they behave one way or the other."

"Authority is not inherent in the person but constructed through context and symbols."

"In the end, the study revealed more about ourselves than about obedience or disobedience."

"The real danger is not in those who knowingly commit evil, but in those who commit it unknowingly."

"The study demonstrates that situational factors often overwhelm dispositional factors in determining behavior."

"Understanding obedience is essential to preventing future atrocities based on blind compliance."

"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."

"To be human means to feel inferior."

"The young child is not concerned with right and wrong, but rather with what brings pleasure and pain."

"One cannot escape the feeling of inferiority by claiming to be superior."

"To have the inferiority complex is to be normal; the question is what we do with it."

"Situational forces often override personal morality in ways we fail to recognize."

"Psychology teaches us that context is destiny for human behavior."

"The transformation from humane to brutal reveals the fragility of civilization."

"The situational perspective does not excuse evil but explains it."

"The psychology of authority explains obedience better than individual pathology."

"In moments of uncertainty, we look to others not for answers, but for permission to doubt ourselves."