Prejudice and discrimination have always been a big part of my life. When I was 6, I got beat up and called dirty Jew boy because they thought I looked Jewish.
That human behavior is more influenced by things outside of us than inside. The situation is the external environment. The inner environment is genes, moral history, religious training.
Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge.
One can’t live mindfully without being enmeshed in psychological processes that are around us.
Sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can kill you.
After doing psychology for half a century, my passion for all of it is greater than ever.
Depending on whom you ask, time is money, time is love, time is work, time is play, time is enjoying friends, time is raising children, and time is much more. Time is what you make of it.
Human behavior is incredibly pliable, plastic.
If you want to change a person, you’ve got to change the situation.
Bullying is an evil because it not only destroys the life of the kid who’s bullied, but also makes everyone in the class who knows this is going on feel guilty for not doing anything.
Academic success depends on research and publications.
I’ve always been curious about the psychology of the person behind the mask. When someone is anonymous, it opens the door to all kinds of antisocial behavior, as seen by the Ku Klux Klan.
Our time is brief, and it will pass no matter what we do. So let us have purpose in spending it. Let us spend it so that our time matters to each of us, and matters to all those whose lives we touch.
While no one can change events that occurred in the past, everyone can change attitudes and beliefs about them.
Time is the backdrop of our lives and the very fabric of the cosmos.
It was God who created hell as a place to store evil. He didn’t do a good job of keeping it there though.
As a result of the prison study, I really became more aware of the central role of power in our lives. I became more aware of the power I have as a teacher. I started consciously doing things to minimize the negative use of power in the classroom. I encouraged students to challenge me.
Time matters because we are finite, because time is the medium in which we live our lives.
Ideas for my first experiments in human aggression came from discussions we had in a research seminar about William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies.’
Fear is the State’s psychological weapon of choice to frighten citizens into sacrificing their basic freedoms and rule-of-law protections in exchange for the security promised by their all-powerful government.