35 Quotes by Carol Tavris

It’s the people who almost decide to live in glass houses who throw the first stones.

Trying to educate a bigot is like shining light into the pupil of an eye – it constricts.

A fan without a team is like a hog without truffles – she has nothing to root for.

To show how memory changes to fit our story, psychologists study how memories evolve over time: if your memories of the same people change, becoming positive or negative spending on what is happening in your life now, then it’s all about you, not them. This process happens so gradually that it can be a jolt to realize you ever felt differently.

When politicians’ backs are against the wall, they may reluctantly acknowledge error but not their responsibility for it. The phrase “mistakes were made” is such a glaring effort to absolve oneself of culpability that it has become a national joke – what the political journalist Bill Schneider called the “past exonerative” tense.

There are plenty of good reasons for admitting mistakes, starting with the simple likelihood that you will probably be found out anyway – by.

We want to hear, we long to hear, “I screwed up. I will do my best to ensure that it will not happen again.” Most of us are not impressed when a leader offers the form of Kennedy’s admission without its essence, as in Ronald Reagan’s response to the Iran-Contra scandal, which may be summarized as “I didn’t do anything wrong myself, but it happened on my watch, so, well, I guess I’ll take responsibility.”3 That doesn’t cut it.

Severe initiations increase a member’s liking for the group.

When it comes to food, there are two large categories of eaters, those who do not worry about what they eat but should, and those who do worry about what they eat but should not.