38 quotes found
Sociologist · American
American sociologist
“Every day brings new choices.”
“Absolutely lonely people have few personal interactions of any kind.”
“People are so afraid of authority figures and doctors are authority figures.”
“Anger elicits anger, fear elicits fear, no matter how well meaning we may be.”
“Hopeful thinking can get you out of your fear zone and into your appreciation zone.”
“The process of spotting fear and refusing to obey it is the source of all true empowerment.”
“If you're living completely on your own, break out of solitary confinement. Seek to understand others, and help them understand you.”
“Theres a Chinese word that means soul sister, and that is the word I would use to address you in my heart. Listen to me, soul sister: Fate or luck or destiny already put you through hell once. Plea...”
“Martha," she said. "Just let it go." "I'm trying," I said. I want to explain to her that this was like telling someone who has been mauled to death by a bear to let the animal go while it was still...”
“Fact: From quitting smoking to skiing, we succeed to the degree we try, fail, and learn. Studies show that people who worry about mistakes shut down, but those who are relaxed about doing badly soo...”
“Cheerfully fessing up to our failures turns crazy mind off, humility and compassion on. I learned this in a karate dojo that had a strange tradition. Everyone there loved recounting failure stories...”
“No one else can take risks for us, or face our losses on our behalf, or give us self-esteem. No one can spare us from life's slings and arrows, and when death comes, we meet it alone.”
“Western democracies exalt the ideal of social equality, but our economic system arguably emerged from 16th-century Calvinism, a religion whose members believed that God showed favor by bestowing we...”
“I feel about aging the way William Saroyan said he felt about death: Everybody has to do it, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case.”
“The thing I love most about my job is watching people age backward, becoming more lively and energetic as they free themselves from situations that are toxic to their essential selves.”
“Since our society equates happiness with youth, we often assume that sorrow, quiet desperation, and hopelessness go hand in hand with getting older. They don't. Emotional pain or numbness are sympt...”
“Getting bogged down in old stories stops the flow of learning by censoring our perceptions, making us functionally deaf and blind to new information. Once the replay button gets pushed, we no longe...”
“I had a client who was a professional baseball player once, and he would go to clubs and dance for seven, eight, nine hours at a time. He wouldn't drink, he wouldn't take drugs - he just danced bec...”
“The way we can allow ourselves to do what we need to, no matter what others may say or do, is to choose love and defy fear.”
“When fear makes your choices for you, no security measures on earth will keep the things you dread from finding you. But if you can avoid avoidance - if you can choose to embrace experiences out of...”
“No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth.”
“If we're stuck with having expectations, there's a very good reason to embrace positive ones: It's that we often create what we anticipate.”
