25 Quotes by Gordon W. Allport

Philosophically speaking, values are the termini of our intentions. We never fully achieve them.

Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better and better problems.

To understand what a person is, it is necessary always to refer to what he may be in the future, for every state of the person is pointed in the direction of future possibilities.

People it seems, are busy leading their lives into the future, whereas psychology, for the most part, is busy tracing them into the past.

It is here that we encounter thecentral theme of existentialism:to live is to suffer, to survive is tofind meaning in the suffering. Ifthere is a purpose in life at all,there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying. But no man can tell another what this purpose is. Each must find out for himself,and must accept the responsibilitythat his answer prescribes.

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

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

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.

Personality is less a finished product than a transitive process. While it has some stable features, it is at the same time continually undergoing change.