Gordon W. Allport quotes

Gordon W. Allport was an influential American psychologist known for his pioneering work in personality psychology. His theories emphasized the uniqueness of the individual and the importance of personal values and motives. He shaped the study of personality with his concept of traits and had a lasting impact on psychology. Here are 31 of his quotes:

The outlines of the needed psychology of becoming can be discovered by looking within ourselves; for it is knowledge of our own uniqueness that supplies the first, and probably the best, hints for acquiring orderly knowledge of others. (Gordon W. Allport)
Each person is an idiom unto himself, an apparent violation of the syntax of the species. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
Self-love, it is obvious, remains always positive and active in our natures. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
We cannot know the young child's personality by studying his systems of interest, for his attention is as yet too labile, his reactions impulsive, and interests unformed. From adolescence onward, however, the surest clue to personality is the hierarchy of interests, including the loves and loyalties of adult life. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
It is not that we have class prejudice, but only that we find comfort and ease in our own class. And normally there are plenty of people of our own class, or race, or religion to play, live, and eat with, and to marry. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
So many tangles in life are ultimately hopeless that we have no appropriate sword other than laughter. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
A prejudice, unlike a simple misconception, is actively resistant to all evidence that would unseat it. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
No corner of the world is free from group scorn. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
The central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
As partisans of our own way of life, we cannot help thinking in a partisan manner. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
Open-mindedness is considered to be a virtue. But, strictly speaking, it cannot occur. A new experience must be redacted into old categories. We cannot handle each event freshly in its own right. If we did so, of what use would past experience be? (Gordon W. Allport)
It takes a major unhappiness, a prolonged and bitter experience, to drive us away from loyalties once formed. And sometimes no amount of punishment can make us repudiate our loyalty. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
Dogmatism makes for scientific anemia. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
What is familiar tends to become a value. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
Scarcely anyone ever wants to be anybody else. However handicapped or unhappy he feels himself, he would not change places with other more fortunate mortals. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
People who are aware of, and ashamed of, their prejudices are well on the road to eliminating them. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
Love received and love given comprise the best form of therapy. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
Life is too short so we must generalize. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and "patriotism" . . . Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
The mature religious sentiment is ordinarily fashioned in the workshop of doubt. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
There is a story of an Oxford student who once remarked, "I despise all Americans, but have never met one I didn't like." (Gordon W. Allport)
Reason adapts impulses and beliefs into the real world; rationalization, on the other hand, adapts the concept of reality to the impulses and beliefs of the individual. Reasoning discovers the true cause of our acts, rationalization finds good reasons for justifying our acts. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
Love-incomparably the greatest psychotherapeutic agent-is something that professional psychiatry cannot of itself create, focus, nor release. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer. Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better problems. View quote
Gordon W. Allport
The specific goals we set for ourselves are almost always subsidiary to our long range intentions. A good parent, a good neighbour, a good citizen, is not good because his specific goals are acceptable, but because his successive goals are ordered to a dependable and socially desirable set of values. (1947) View quote
Gordon W. Allport