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:

Each person is an idiom unto himself, an apparent violation of the syntax of the species.

Gordon W. Allport

Self-love, it is obvious, remains always positive and active in our natures.

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.

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.

Gordon W. Allport

So many tangles in life are ultimately hopeless that we have no appropriate sword other than laughter.

Gordon W. Allport

A prejudice, unlike a simple misconception, is actively resistant to all evidence that would unseat it.

Gordon W. Allport

No corner of the world is free from group scorn.

Gordon W. Allport

The central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.

Gordon W. Allport

As partisans of our own way of life, we cannot help thinking in a partisan manner.

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.

Gordon W. Allport

Dogmatism makes for scientific anemia.

Gordon W. Allport

What is familiar tends to become a value.

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.

Gordon W. Allport

People who are aware of, and ashamed of, their prejudices are well on the road to eliminating them.

Gordon W. Allport

Love received and love given comprise the best form of therapy.

Gordon W. Allport

Life is too short so we must generalize.

Gordon W. Allport

Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and "patriotism" . . . Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots.

Gordon W. Allport

The mature religious sentiment is ordinarily fashioned in the workshop of doubt.

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.

Gordon W. Allport

Love-incomparably the greatest psychotherapeutic agent-is something that professional psychiatry cannot of itself create, focus, nor release.

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.

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)

Gordon W. Allport