THE 100 BEST PSYCHOLOGY QUOTES FROM FAMOUS PSYCHOLOGISTS - ECONOMÍA - 2025

I leave you the best psychology phrases of the most famous psychologists in history; Sigmund Freud, Albert Bandura, Carl Rogers, Jung, Abraham Maslow, Skinner, Pavlov or William James.

There are positive psychology, emotions, psychoanalysis, humanists, behaviorism… They will help you to think and to learn more about this science. The sentences stimulate us to know ourselves, inspire us, develop ourselves personally and understand in a few sentences the thoughts of other people.

You may also be interested in these phrases by Freud or these by Carl Jung.

Quotes from the most famous psychologists in history

-When inspiration does not find me, I go halfway to find it.-Sigmund Freud.

-The curious paradox is that when I accept myself, I can change.-Carl Rogers.

-Don't become a mere recorder of facts, try to penetrate the mystery of its origin.-Ivan Pavlov.

-The distinctive characteristics of the mind are subjective; We know them only by the content of our own consciousness.-Wilhelm Wundt.

-I always looked for strength and confidence outside of me, but it comes from within. It is there all the time.-Anna Freud.

-The more you know yourself, the more patience you will have for what you see in others.-Erik Erikson.

-Psychology, unlike chemistry, algebra or literature, is a manual for your own mind. It is a guide for life.-Daniel Goldstein.

-The real problem is not if machines think, but if man does.-BF Skinner.

-Economists think about what people should do. Psychologists observe what they really do.-Daniel Kahneman.

-Psychology helps to measure the probability that a goal is achievable.-Edward Thorndike.

-The message sent is not always the message received.-Virginia Satir.

-If you change the way you see things, you will change the things you see.-Wayne Dyer.

-If you really want to understand something, try to change it.-Kurt Lewin.

-Music is part of being human.-Oliver Sacks.

-I am not what happened to me. I am what I chose to be.-Carl Jung.

-People have motives and thoughts of which they are not aware.-Albert Ellis.

-Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.-Erich Fromm.

-To a large extent you created your depression. Nobody gave it to you. Therefore, you can eliminate it.-Albert Ellis.

-Give me a child and I will mold him into anything.-BF Skinner.

-We are not prisoners of the past.-Martin Seligman.

-There is no psychology; There is only biography and autobiography.-Thomas Szasz.

-Goals transform a random walk into a chase.-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

-The domination is shown in an assertive, independent, confident and stubborn behavior.-Raymond Catell.

32-A prejudice, unlike a simple error, is actively resistant to all the tests that would unseat it.-Gordon W. Allport.

-The perfect normal person is rare in our civilization.-Karen Horney.

-You are what you do, not what you say you are going to do.-Carl Jung.

-Nothing gives life more purpose than realizing that each moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.-Steven Pinker.

-Maybe our conscience is the first step for our liberation.-Stanley Milgram.

42-Man knows much more than he understands.-Alfred Adler.

-It is not normal to know what we want. It is a strange and difficult psychological achievement.-Abraham Maslow.

23-Clear thinking requires courage more than intelligence.-Thomas Szasz.

-Heroes are those who somehow resist the power of the situation and act for noble motives, or behave in a way that does not degrade others when they could easily do so.-Philip Zimbardo.

-Geniuses are admired, healthy men are envied, powerful men are feared; But only men with character are trusted.-Alfred Adler.

-There are three obligations that hold us back: I have to do it well. You have to treat me well. And the world has to be easy.-Albert Ellis.

-The disappearance of the sense of responsibility is the greatest consequence of submission to authority.-Stanley Milgram.

-The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to miss.-William James.

-The task that we must establish for ourselves is not to be safe, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.-Erich Fromm.

-Each act of perception is also an act of creation and every act of memory is also an act of imagination.-Oliver Sacks.

-The true direction of the development of thought is not from the individual to the social, but from the social to the individual.-Lev S. Vygotsky.

-I am not in this world to live up to the expectations of others, nor do I feel that the world should live up to mine.-Fritz Perls.

-The best years of your life occur when you decide to take responsibility for your problems. You don't blame them on your mother, the environment, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.-Albert Ellis.

-When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to find it.-Sigmund Freud.

-The great discovery of my generation is that human beings can change their lives by changing their mental attitudes.-William James.

-Success or failure depends more on attitude than ability. Successful men act like they've achieved something or enjoyed something. Act, look, feel, as if you were successful and you will see impressive results.-William James.

-The ability to be in the present moment is a main component of mental health.-Abraham Maslow.

-Self-knowledge and personal development are difficult for most people. Normally it requires a lot of courage and perseverance.-Abraham Maslow.

-The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.-Carl Rogers.

-We think we think, but we rarely do it with real understanding and empathy. However, true listening is one of the most powerful forces for change that I know.-Carl Rogers.

-The real problem is not if machines think, but if men do.-BF Skinner.

-Each act of conscious learning requires the will to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children learn so quickly before being aware of their own importance.-Thomas Szasz.

-Civilization begins when an angry person chooses a word instead of a rock.-Sigmund Freud.

-What is necessary to change a person is to change his consciousness of himself.-Abraham Maslow.

-I think one of the main results of decision-making psychology is that people's attitudes and feelings about gains and losses are not symmetrical. We feel more pain when losing 10,000 euros than pleasure when winning 10,000 euros.-Daniel Kahneman.

-They never taught you how to speak with your gestures, but you were taught to speak with words.-Paul Ekman.

-The big question that nobody has answered, and that I have not been able to answer after thirty years of investigation of the feminine soul is, What does a woman want? -Sigmund Freud.

-The most personal is more universal.-Carl Rogers.

-Be miserable or motivate yourself. Whatever you do, it is always your decision.-Wayne Dyer Lee.

-The difficulty in accepting responsibility for our behavior lies in the desire to avoid the pain of the consequences of that behavior.-M. Scott Peck.

-Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.-M. Scott Peck.

-The pendulum of the mind oscillates between meaning and nonsense, not between good and evil.-CG Jung.

-The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.-Sigmund Freud.

-We pay attention to what they tell us to attend to, what we are looking for or what we already know. What we see is incredibly limited.-Daniel Simons.

-We fear knowing the unpleasant and fearful aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more knowing the divine in ourselves.-Abraham Maslow.

-The objective of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge, but to create possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create men who are capable of doing new things.-Jean Piaget.

-Even a happy life cannot be measured without darkness. The word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.-CG Jung.

-Any form of addiction is bad, be it alcohol, morphine or idealism.-CG Jung.

-I suppose it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail, if the only tool you have is a hammer.-Abraham Maslow.

-We speak of virtue, honor, reason; But our thinking does not translate any of these concepts into a substance.-Wilhelm Wundt.

17-We are imprisoned in the kingdom of life, like a sailor in his little boat, in an infinite ocean.-Anna Freud.

41-One cannot be responsible for the world without feeling sad very often.-Erich Fromm.

-Sometimes, the most beautiful thing is precisely the unexpected and what is not gained, therefore, something that is truly given as a present. Anna Freud

-People often say that this or that person has not found himself. However, the "I" is not something that is found, it is something that is created.-Thomas Stephen Szasz.

-It seems that what is necessary is not to fear mistakes, do the best one can and hope to learn enough to correct oneself in time.-Abraham Maslow.

-It has always been known that creative minds survive any kind of bad training.-Anna Freud.

-If a person loves only one person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love, but a symbiotic attachment or expanded egoism.-Erich Fromm.

-We are what we want.-Erik Erikson.

-A person who has been punished will be no less likely to behave in a certain way; In the best of cases she will learn to avoid punishment.-BF Skinner.

-A lie does not make sense unless the truth had felt dangerous.-Alfred Adler.

-It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.-Alfred Adler.

-It is impossible to understand addiction without wondering what relief the addict finds or hopes to find in drugs or addictive behavior.-Gabor Maté.

-The problem is not that you have symptoms - it's what you do with the symptoms you have.-Fred Penzel.

-Most of my patients did not consist of believers, but of people who lost their faith.-CG Jung.

-The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.-Alfred Adler.

-Experience alone does not create knowledge.-Kurt Lewin.

-Psychology is the science of the intellects, characters and behavior of animals, including man.-Edward Thorndike.

-Human people are eager to find intelligence in animals.-Edward Thorndike.

42-Nowhere more truly than in his mental capacities, man is part of nature.-Edward Thorndike.

-Even injustice has its positive side. It provides me with the challenge of being as happy as I can in an unfair world.-Albert Ellis.

-A man with a conviction is a difficult man to change. Tell him that you don't agree and he leaves. Show him facts or figures and question his sources. Appeal to logic and can not see your point of view.-Leon Festinger.

-Anything that is worth teaching can be presented in many different ways. These multiple ways can make use of our multiple intelligences.-Howard Gardner.

-Life isn't what it's supposed to be. It is what it is. The way you deal with her is what makes the difference.-Virginia Satir.

-To live is to be born at every moment.-Erich Fromm.

-In the nineteenth century, the problem was that God was dead. In the twentieth century, the problem is that man is dead.-Erich Fromm.

-A failure is not always a mistake, it can simply be the best thing one can do in their circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.-BF Skinner.

-The human world is much more transparent to us than is commonly supposed.-Carol Gilligan.

-In my relationships with people I have found that it does not help, in the long term, to act as if it were something that I am not.-Carl Rogers.

-In my first years of professional life, I wondered how I could treat, cure or change this person. Now I have changed the question as follows: What can I give this person that will help him or her personal growth? -Carl R. Rogers.

-Whether we speak of a flower, a tree, an earthworm, a bird, an ape or a person, we do well to recognize that life is an active process, not a passive process. -Carl R. Rogers.

-The behavior of the organism is intended to maintain, strengthen and reproduce the species. This is the nature of the process we call life.-Carl R. Rogers.

-My love is something so valuable to me that I cannot give it to anyone without having reflected.-Sigmund Freud.

-Live one day at a time emphasizing ethics instead of rules.-Wayne Dyer.

-Human nature is not as bad as it has been thought.-Abraham Maslow.

-We can define therapy as a search for value.-Abraham Maslow.

-Never think you know everything. No matter how high you value yourself, always have the courage to tell yourself: "I am ignorant".- Ivan Pavlov.

-The only normal people are the ones you don't know much.-Alfred Adler.

-For the origin and development of the human faculty, we must observe these association processes in lower animals.-Edward Thorndike.

-Doubt is the brother of shame.-Erik Erikson.

-Don't mistake a child for his symptoms.-Erik Erikson.

-I think traditional wisdom is incomplete.-Martin Seligman.

-The one who suffers incurable is not given the opportunity to be proud of his own suffering and to consider it noble. Instead, he is degraded in such a way that he is not only unhappy, but ashamed of being unhappy.-Viktor E. Frankl.

-The concern of men, even their despair, for the insignificance of life is an existential concern but it is not a symbol of a mental illness.-Viktor E. Frankl.

- Curing the negative aspects does not produce the positive aspects.-Martin Seligman.

-The truth has a fictional structure.-Jacques Lacan.

-The great use of life is to spend it on something that will last longer than it.-William James.

-The proof of all truth lies, simply, in its effectiveness.-William James.

-Nothing in life is as important as you think, while you think about it.-Daniel Kahneman.

-Familiarity begets taste.-Daniel Kahneman.

-There is no greater lie than the misunderstood truth.-William James.

-Money does not buy you happiness, but the lack of money certainly buys you misery.-Daniel Kahneman.

-If I can not be beautiful, then I will decide to be smart.-Karen Horney.

-If you want to be proud of yourself, then do things that make you proud. -Karen Horney.

-In a very real sense, we have two minds, one that thinks and the other that feels.-Daniel Goleman.

-I am what survives of me.-Erik Erikson.

-Follow your heart but take your brain with you.-Alfred Adler.

- Being human means feeling inferior.-Alfred Adler.

- The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.- CG Jung.

-Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge.-CG Jung.

-The mind is a neural computer.-Steven Pinker.

34-Behavioral science is not for fools.-Steven Pinker.

41-Insanity is the only sensible reaction to an insane society.-Thomas Szasz.

-To find what truly differentiates us from others, our individuality, we need to reflect deeply; and suddenly we realize how difficult it is to discover our individuality.-CG Jung.

-The main condition to have love is to overcome narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which the being experiences as real only what exists within himself, while the phenomena of the external world do not represent a reality in themselves.-Erich Fromm.

-People tend to evaluate themselves by comparing themselves with other people, not using absolute standards.-Leon Festinger.

-Share our similarities, celebrate our differences.-M. Scott Peck.

-Human behavior is incredibly flexible, plastic.-Philip G. Zimbardo.

-Everything bad starts with 15 volts.-Philip G. Zimbardo.

-Lose your mind and return to your senses.-Fritz Perls.

-I only have one goal: to impart a fraction of the meaning of the word now.-Fritz Perls.

-History is always the interpretation of the present.-George Herbert Mead.

-Therefore, we seek intimacy with the entire universe, not just with one person.-David Richo.

23-A lot is asked of parents, and very little is given.-Virginia Satir.

-The empty words of thought are a dead thing. The thoughts that are not expressed in words remain as shadows.-Lev S. Vygotsky

-Be independent of the good opinion of other people.-Abraham Maslow.

-A person can feel lonely, even when many people love her.-Anna Freud.

-He who is happy makes others happy too.-Anna Freud.

-When a love relationship is at its peak, there is no room for interest in the rest of the world. That lovers have each other is enough.-Sigmund Freud.

-I do not see the misery that there is, but the beauty that still remains.-Anna Freud.

-Nothing is more practical than a good theory.-Kurt Lewin.

-The concern should lead us to action, not to depression.-Karen Horney.

Positive psychology phrases

-Trusting in yourself does not guarantee success, but not doing so guarantees failure.-Albert Bandura.

-Success requires persistence, the ability not to give up in the face of failure. I believe that the optimistic style is the key to persistence.-Martin Seligman.

-Psychology cannot tell people how they should live their lives. However, it can provide them with meaning for effective personal and social change.-Albert Bandura.

10-Even when it is not completely achievable, we become better by pursuing a higher goal.-Victor Frankl.

-The true meaning of life is found in the world and not in the human psyche. -Viktor E. Frankl.

-When I look at the world I am pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.-Carl Rogers.

-I try to expand the scope of positive psychology beyond the happy face. Happiness is only a fifth of what human beings choose to do.-Martin Seligman.

-Through pride, we deceive ourselves. But in the depths of consciousness a voice tells us that something is out of place.-CG Jung.

-If you think that you cause good things, you tend to like it more than if you think that good things come from other people.-Martin Seligman.

-Our scars are often the opening to our best and most beautiful parts.-David Richo.

-Happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good luck or chance. It is not something that money can buy or the power to direct. It does not depend on external events, but, rather, on how we interpret them.-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

-The control of consciousness determines the quality of life.-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

-I am realistic, I expect miracles.-Wayne W. Dyer.

-You will see it when you believe it.-Wayne W. Dyer.

Emotional psychology phrases

-Follow your heart but take your brain with you.-Alfred Adler.

-Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says' I need you because I love you.'- Erich Fromm.

-Human nature is complex. Despite the inclination to violence, we also have the inclination to empathy, cooperation and self-control.-Steven Pinker.

-True compassion means not only feeling the pain of others but being moved to help alleviate it.-Daniel Goleman.

-A prerequisite for empathy is simply to pay attention to the person who is in pain.-Daniel Goleman.

-Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who bother do not matter and those who matter will not bother.-Fritz Perls.

-The art of relationships requires maturing two emotional skills: self-control and empathy. -Daniel Goleman.

23-Anger never comes without a reason, but this is rarely adequate.-Daniel Goleman.

-The sensations tell us that one thing is. Thought tells us what a thing is. Feelings tell us what a thing is to us. -CG Jung.

-The rational mind does not usually decide what emotions “we should” have.-Daniel Goleman.

-As Horace Walpole said: Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.-Daniel Goleman.

-People with well-developed emotional abilities have a greater chance of being cheerful and efficient in life, and they will be able to cultivate mental habits that improve their productivity.-Daniel Goleman.

-Stress makes people stupid.-Daniel Goleman.

35-Obsessive thoughts are the fuel that fuels the fire of anger, a fire that can only be extinguished by contemplating things from a different point of view.-Daniel Goleman.

-Perhaps there is no psychological skill more important than resisting the urge.-Daniel Goleman.

-Un expressed emotions never die. They are buried alive and come out later in uglier forms.-Sigmund Freud.

23-Self-love, it is obvious, always remains positive and active in our nature.-Gordon W. Allport.

Social psychology phrases

-The human mind is an organ for the discovery of truths rather than falsehoods.-Solomon E. Asch.

-Life in society requires consensus as an indispensable condition. But consensus, to be productive, requires each individual to contribute independently from their experience and understanding.-Solomon E. Asch.

-In case of conflict, each side thinks it is good and the other is bad.-Steven Pinker.

-Leadership is not dominating. It is the art of persuading people to achieve a common goal.-Daniel Goleman.

-Most social events must be understood in context, since they lose meaning if they are isolated.-Solomon Asch.

11-Institutions, no less than people, may need to be socialized.-Thomas Szasz.

-In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.-Erik Erikson.

-Social action, like physical action, is directed by perception.-Kurt Lewin.

-In the animal kingdom the rule is "eat or they will eat you"; in the human kingdom it is "defined or defined".- Thomas Stephen Szasz.

-Social psychology is especially interested in the effect that the social group has in determining the experience and behavior of the individual.-George Herbert Mead.

-We are prone to suffering due to three causes: our body, which is condemned to decay; the external world, which can be against us; and finally, our relationship with other people.-Sigmund Freud.

Psychoanalysis phrases

-It could be said of psychoanalysis that if you give the little finger you will soon have the whole hand.-Sigmund Freud.

-The god of each person is psychologically the transfigured father, that is, our vital experience with the father is sublimated and projected into the paternal divinization.-Sigmund Freud.

-The inability to tolerate ambiguity is the root of all neuroses.-Sigmund Freud.

-We call a sexual practice perverse when the goal of reproduction has been renounced and the gain of pleasure is pursued as an autonomous goal.-Sigmund Freud.

-What is rejected from itself, appears in the world as an event.-CG Jung.

-What you resist, persists.-CG Jung.

-The dream is a door that hides in the deepest and most intimate part of our soul, that opens towards the spring cosmic night that was the soul before consciousness and ego arrived. -CG Jung.

-The stone has no uncertainties, no need to communicate, and is still eternal. I, on the other hand, am a temporary phenomenon that burns at the mercy of emotions, like a flame that sparks and goes out. -CG Jung.

-After all, mistakes are the basis of truth. If a man does not know what a thing is, at least he will increase his knowledge if he knows what it is not.-CG Jung.

-How can I be substantial if I don't project a shadow? I must have a dark side to be able to say that I am a whole.-CG Jung.

-The creative power is stronger than the person who possesses it.-CG Jung.

-I have seen people who become neurotic when they settle for inadequate or incorrect answers to life's questions. They are looking for a good position, marriage, reputation, money, but they remain unhappy and neurotic despite having obtained what they were looking for.-CG Jung.

-The real is what absolutely resists symbolization.-Jacques Lacan.

-The innocent fantasies are always present and always active in every individual, existing from the beginning of life. It is a function of the self.-Melanie Klein.

-The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the chains of matter.-Sigmund Freud.

-The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety and therefore the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.-Sigmund Freud.

-The unconscious is the largest circle that includes within itself the smallest circle of the conscious; Every conscious has its preliminary step in the unconscious, while the unconscious can stop with this step and still claim full value as a psychic activity.-Sigmund Freud.

-Dreams can be so declared: They are hidden realizations of repressed desires.-Sigmund Freud.

-Sleep is not a somatic phenomenon but a psychic phenomenon.-Sigmund Freud.

-Religion is an attempt to control the sensory world in which we find ourselves.-Sigmund Freud.

-Where does thought go when it forgets? -Sigmund Freud.

-It is a predisposition of human nature to take an idea that does not please you as false. This way it is easier to find arguments that are against it.-Sigmund Freud.

-The unconscious of a human being can react to that of another without going through the conscious.-Sigmund Freud.

-The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.-Sigmund Freud.

-When the most intense conflicts are overcome, they leave a feeling of security and tranquility that is not easily disturbed. It is only these intense conflicts and their conflagration that are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.-Carl Jung.

-The dream arises from a part of the mind unknown to us, but no less important, and it has to do with the wishes for the day that is approaching.-Carl Jung.

-The greater the feeling of inferiority that a person has experienced, the more powerful is the impulse of conquest and the more violent is the emotional turmoil.-Alfred Adler.

-In the dream the vital problem of an individual is revealed in a symbolic way.-Alfred Adler.

-The symptoms, what you think you know about other people, may seem irrational, but it is because you take them in isolation, and want to interpret them directly.-Jacques Lacan.

-The desire is always desire. Lack generates desire. Desire is never fully satisfied. The subject is subject to desire.-Jacques Lacan.

35-An analyst does not know what he says, but he must know what he is doing.-Jacques Lacan.

Educational psychology phrases

-What a child can do today with help, he can do only tomorrow.-Lev S. Vygotsky.

-Through others we become mimes.-Lev S. Vygotsky.

-By giving our students practice to speak with others, we give them frameworks to think for themselves.-Lev S. Vygotsky

35-Logic and mathematics are nothing more than specialized linguistic structures.-Jean Piaget.

-We must put ourselves inside the heads of our students and try to understand, as far as possible, the sources and strengths of their conceptions.-Howard Gardner.

25-Inside the child lies the destiny of the future.-Maria Montessori.

-Education is what survives when what has been learned survives.-BF Skinner.

-One of the many interesting and surprising experiences of the beginner in the analysis of the child is to find, even in very young children, a capacity for discernment that is often much greater than that of adults.-Melanie Klein.

-Babies control and educate their families as much as they are controlled by them.-Gabor Maté.

-It is very important to evaluate intelligence, but standardized tests are not the solution.-Howard Gardner.

-The educational system has changed more in recent decades than in previous centuries.-Howard Gardner.

-Speech and action are part of one and the same complex psychological function, directed towards the solution of the problem in question.-Lev Vygotsky.

-Never help a child with a task in which he feels he can be successful.-Maria Montessori.