Psychology

"America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, even eaten with people who in America would have been considered 'white,' but the 'white' attitude had been removed from their minds by the religion of Islam."

"The attitude of capitalists to war, it is true, has fluctuated... In modern times, big business, everywhere, has come into such intimate relations with the national State that the situation is greatly changed. But even now, both in England and in America, big business on the whole dislikes war."

"The attitude of man toward the non-human environment has differed profoundly at different times. The Greeks, with their dread of hubris and their belief in a Necessity or Fate superior even to Zeus, carefully avoided what would have seemed to them insolence towards the universe. The Middle Ages carried submission much further: humility towards God was a Christian's first duty. Initiative was cramped by this attitude, and great originality was scarcely possible. The Renaissance restored human pride, but carried it to the point where it led to anarchy and disaster. Its works were largely undone by the Reformation and the Counter-reformation. But modern technique, while not altogether favorable to the lordly individual of the Renaissance, has revived the sense of the collective power of human communities. Man, formerly too humble, begins to think of himself as almost a God."

"In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is nether reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible, the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which he has hitherto held. Contempt interferes with the first part of this process, and reverence with the second."

"There is very little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference! The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative."

"A healthy attitude is contagious; but don’t wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier."

"The vast individual and corporate fortunes, the vast combinations of capital, which have marked the development of our industrial system create new conditions, and necessitate a change from the old attitude of the state and the nation toward property."

"Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you're going to live your life."

"Attitude is everything. Having the right attitude is fundamental to being an effective leader. Every one enjoys being around a person who is helpful and searches for solutions. A positive attitude also looks for the good in everything instead of the bad. And why shouldn’t you have a positive attitude?"

"Consistent Execution+Proven Strategy (and Right Prospects)+Attitude/Characteristics (Confident, Best Thinking, Enthusiastic, Creative, Resilient, Persistent, Driven, Intuitive, Honorable, Seeks to Serve/Learn, Self-aware, Coachable, Etc,)+Communications Style = Success."

"In part by their apathy, in part by their passivity, and in part actively, these masses of people make possible the catastrophes under which they themselves suffer more than anybody else. To stress this guilt on the part of masses of people, to hold them solely responsible, means to take them seriously. On the other hand, to commiserate masses of people as victims, means to treat them as small, helpless children. The former is the attitude held by genuine freedom-fighters; the latter the attitude held by the power-thirsty politicians."

"A in my ABCs refers to attitude. William James, a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher, wrote, “The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.”"

"So much in life depends on our attitude. The way we choose to see things and respond to others makes all the difference. To do the best we can and then to choose to be happy about our circumstances, whatever they may be, can bring peace and contentment."

"I contend to be a fighter for pureness and truth. I hesitate, because I am afraid of you and your attitude towards truth. To say the truth about you is dangerous to life."

"Your attitude comes from inside. When you are able to relax and let your true personality shine through, you come across as confident and interesting. You appear to like, respect, and believe in yourself. When that happens, people like being around you. They like working with you, and they trust your competence level. They know that you will make certain that things are done right. Your appearance, attitude, and confidence define you as a person. A professional, well-dressed golfer, like a businessperson, gives the impression that he thinks that the golf course and/or workplace and the people there are important."

"A man's attitude goes some ways, the way his life will be."

"Attitude... It is the “advance man” of our true selves. Its roots are inward but its fruit is outward. It is our best friend or our worst enemy. It is more honest and more consistent than our words. It is an outward look based on past experiences. It is a thing which draws people to us or repels them. It is never content until it is expressed. It is the librarian of our past. It is the speaker of the present. It is the prophet of our future."

"Any one who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory. Good culture is born of a good disposition; and since the cause is more to be praised than the effect, I will rather praise a good disposition without culture, than good culture without the disposition."

"Be a little dog with a big dog attitude. Your attitude is the little thing that makes a big difference."

"Your attitude is like a box of crayons that color your world. Constantly color your picture gray, and your picture will always be bleak. Try adding some bright colors to the picture by including humor, and your picture begins to lighten up."

"Charles Swindoll—author, educator, and Christian pastor—said: “Attitude, to me, is more important than … the past, ...than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company, a church, a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day."

"Peace is a great good; and doubly harmful, therefore, is the attitude of those who advocate it in terms that would make it synonymous with selfish and cowardly shrinking from warring against the existence of evil."

"A picture or representation of human figures, ought to be done in such a way as that the spectator may easily recognise, by means of their attitudes, the purpose in their minds."

"It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come."

"I can, of course, put myself into the sectarian scientist's attitude, and imagine vividly that the world of sensations and scientific laws and objects may be all. But whenever I do this, I hear that inward monitor of which W. K. Clifford once wrote, whispering the word "bosh!" Humbug is humbug, even though it bear the scientific name, and the total expression of human experience, as I view it objectively, invincibly urges me beyond the narrow "scientific" bounds."

"There are so many myths out there about Marianne Faithfull, I had to, um, detach. But I can turn it on because Marianne Faithfull is really an attitude, you know. And what is that attitude? She picks up a forkful of mashed potatoes and smiles beatifically: "That attitude is: fuck off.""

"An attitude of orientation, is what the pragmatic method means. The attitude of looking away from first things, principles, "categories", supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts."

"I do not believe that anarchist doctrine is the solution to the problem of organization in society and government. I do not think that if anarchism were to succeed we should have a better or more livable society. Hence I am not fighting for the triumph of this doctrine. On the other hand, it seems to me that an anarchist attitude is the only one that is sufficiently radical in the face of a general statist system."

"What we have in mind is the attitude that conscientous objectors take on a specific point, and not without good reason. In the present set-up the anarchist attitude of a total refusal of validity or legitimacy to any authority of any kind seems to me to be the only valid and viable one. The point is not to enforce a particular view of society but to establish a counterbalance, a protest, a sign of cleavage. In face of an absolute power only a total confrontation has any meaning."

"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goall nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."

"It is our attitude toward events, not events themselves, which we can control. Nothing is by its own nature calamitous -- even death is terrible only if we fear it."

"In one sense, knowledge is that which we take for granted. It is that which is settled, disposed of, established, under control. What we fully know, we do not need to think about. In common phrase, it is certain, assured. And this does not mean a mere feeling of certainty. It denotes not a sentiment, but a practical attitude, a readiness to act without reserve or quibble. Of course we may be mistaken. What is taken for knowledge — for fact and truth — at a given time may not be such. But everything which is assumed without question, which is taken for granted in our intercourse with one another and nature is what, at the given time, is called knowledge."

"In the late eighteenth and the greater part of the nineteenth centuries appeared the first marked cultural shift in the attitude taken toward change. Under the names of indefinite perfectibility, progress, and evolution, the movement of things in the universe itself and of the universe as a whole began to take on a beneficent instead of hateful aspect."

"The worst thing about stubbornness of mind, about prejudices, is that they arrest development; they shut off the mind from new stimuli. Open-mindedness means retention of the childlike attitude; closed-mindedness means premature intellectual old age."

"I can understand your aversion to the use of the term "religion" to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza … I have not found a better expression than "religious" for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason."

"Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character; it becomes lack of power to act with courage proportionate to danger. All this must lead to the destruction of our intellectual life unless the danger summons up strong personalities able to fill the lukewarm and discouraged with new strength and resolution."

"You may not be able to change a situation, but with humor you can change your attitude about it."

"These two attitudes, the attitude of deifying mere efficiency, mere success, without regard to the moral qualities lying behind it, and the attitude of disregarding efficiency, disregarding practical results, are the Scylla and Charybdis between which every earnest reformer, every politician who desires to make the name of his profession a term of honor instead of shame, must steer. He must avoid both under penalty of wreckage, and it avails him nothing to have avoided one, if he founders on the other. People are apt to speak as if in political life, public life, it ought to be a mere case of striving upward — striving toward a high peak. The simile is inexact. Every man who is striving to do good public work is traveling along a ridge crest, with the gulf of failure on each side — the gulf of inefficiency on the one side, the gulf of unrighteousness on the other."

"Social pain changes as kids grow older, and the reasons for bullying become more complex. Tweens and middle schoolers can find themselves perfectly accepted one day and ostracized the next, leaving them bewildered as to how things fell apart. This is what happened with Deanna, who told me that her problems began in sixth grade. "I had never had trouble making friends before, but now that I was in middle school, the girls did not like me because I wore short hair and weird clothes." Deanna's family was barely making ends meet, and her school was located in a wealthy neighborhood. By the middle of the year, the ostracism was overwhelming. "I asked one of the girls why she didn't like me, and she just said, 'because you're weird.' I held out my hand and said, 'I think we got off on the wrong foot; let's start over. Hi, I'm Deanna.' She looked at me and said, 'Start over? We're not going out! What are you, some kind of lesbian?' and then spread the rumor around the school that I was, in fact, a lesbian, and that if any female talked to me, I would rape them.""

"Do kids "invite" bullying by acting differently than others? Stan Davis is one bullying expert who is working to combat that type of thinking. He spoke passionately to me about the need to stop assigning responsibility to the victim, insisting that "we as a society must give up on the adult idea that if someone did something to you, it must be because you did something wrong. Adults think that the only people who get picked on are too passive or too annoying, and if we react to a kid's report of injury from that frame of mind, we have a problem." Davis commented that this mentality is exactly how the police used to react to reports of rape. Police would ask a rape victim what she was wearing. "We have lobbied to change that way of thinking," he said. "Sure, it was a task, but it was successful, and now police would never say to a rape victim, 'Well, what were you wearing?' We need to do the same thing with bullying." Davis stressed that mean behavior is the fault of the person that does it. "I tell parents that their child is teased because there are people who think making fun of someone who is different is acceptable, not because your child has an awkward social style. This requires a big conceptual change: teasing tells us about the person who did it and nothing about the person who was teased.""

"Some bullies spread lies about other kids. They tell mean stories that embarrass kids. Bullies can make their victims feel awful. Bullying can make kids feel like they don't fit in at school. Bullies might say things like, "You can't play with us." Or they might say, "Don't sit at our table." This is how kids make bullies feel as though they are not liked. Kids who are bullied may feel like they are not good enough to be part of the group. But all kids deserve respect."

"Bullying can happen just about anywhere... Bullies can taunt kids in the cafeteria or on the bus. Usually, they choose places where adults are watching too many kids at once. Or they find places where there are no adults at all."

"The outlook for the most-affected victims is serious, but I believe there is hope that we can continue to reduce the number of victims. Bullying is a learned behavior. Children are not born cruel. Babies in diapers do not assess each other as too fat, too poor, too dark-skinned, too nerdy, too conceited. Born innocent, they start learning stereotypes as soon as they understand language, and we see bullying behaviors in children as young as toddlers. Since preschoolers who display marked aggressiveness have a higher likelihood of being bullies in older grades, the earlier intervention begins, the better the results. It is much easier to inculcate kindness and acceptance into a five-year-old who acts like a bully than into a fifteen-year-old who acts like a bully."

"At the same time that we teach empathy to the bullies, we need to stop sending the victims the message that their own behavior or traits are bringing on the attacks. This requires a fundamental change in the way adults view bullying. A child is not bullied because he is gay or autistic or overweight. A child is bullied because a bully has decided that the target is unacceptably different and less worthy of respect. We must teach the targets how to cognitively frame the bullying so that they do not think the abuse is their fault or something they deserve. Groundbreaking new research by Stan Davis and Charisse Nixon has shown that when a victim learns to think about the bullying in new ways- "This bullying is not happening because I am overweight. It is happening because the bully is choosing to act in a mean and hateful way, and that is his fault, not mine"- then the effects of the mistreatment are greatly diminished. Davis and Nixon's research also shows that many bullied kids find relief when they tell an adult or peer, but many are reluctant to do so."

"The person hurt most by bullying is the bully himself. Most bullies have a downwardly spiraling course through life. Bullies... are fare more likely than nonaggressive kids to commit crimes, batter their wives, abuse their children- and produce another generation of bullies."

"Despite the efforts of adults, bullying, harassment, and hazing continue to be widespread problems in our nation's schools. Virtually all students are involved as victims, bullies, bully/victims, or witnesses. With severe impacts on lifelong development and mental health, finding a way to prevent bullying is a major public health concern. Far more prevalent than we once believed, bullying occurs in our schools and via cyberspace on an around-the-clock basis. There are long-term costs that haunt those involved, and these consequences are not solely carried by the victims. Bullies are more likely than the general population to become workplace bullies (Matthiesen & Einarsen, 2007; Zapf & Einarsen, 2011) or to end up involved with the criminal justice system (Apel & Burrow, 2011; Carter, 2012). As noted earlier, research establishes that both bullies and victims can experience lifelong depression, anxieties, difficulties in relationships, and an inability to trust others. Because bullying is traumatic, it can result in post-traumatic stress disorder."

"While adults admonish children to stop bullying each other, there is an adult moral code witnessed in their behavior that allows for- and promotes- bullying and revenge. Consequently, we have to realize that children do not have enough power to change it and it is not their responsibility. Prevention of this pervasive phenomenon is the direct responsibility of adults. Adults at school and in the community need to make the commitment to examine and change their own behavior if they hope to diminish bullying among children."

"I talked to a lot of kids that get bullied, they brought it on themselves."

"We need to empower the bystanders and witnesses to speak up or go get help, and we need to teach them that silent or laughing or joining in makes them accountable too. If even a single witness reaches out to a victim, the tide can change. Others will join in, and the balance of power shifts. The situation diffuses, and the bullying will cease. How do we teach these skills? By creating caring environments in which all of the different worlds our children inhabit: the home, the school, the neighborhood, the Internet, the playing fields, and all the places in between. Increasing the adult supervision of high-risk bullying areas is part of the picture. But our budget-strapped schools will be the first to admit that it is impossible to always have a connected, respected teacher in every corner, and time-pressured parents will protest that they cannot be everywhere. This is why our kids need better social skills. We don't want to create a "helicopter parent" approach to bullying intervention. Yes, adult monitoring and intervention are critical, but so is the ability of children to resolve conflict on their own. If we swoop in and rescue our kids every time someone picks on them, we inadvertently teach them that they cannot take care of themselves."

"Bullying is a mean behavior. It is a way to make fun of other people. Some bullies pick on kids or say bad things about them. They also keep other kids from feeling like they are part of the group. Usually, bullying is not a one-time thing. Instead, bullies tease their victims over and over."