Psychological Flaws Quotes

The trouble with psychology is that it doesn't take human nature into account.

Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.

In 'Winnie the Pooh,' a lot of the characters have serious flaws: Pooh is sort of a food addict. Rabbit is OCD, and Owl is a compulsive liar.

It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.

There are more defects in temperament than in the mind.

Human life is so strangely constituted that even perfected intellectual understanding combined with the richest experience is incapable of conquering innate weaknesses. Even if it thoroughly analyzes itself, psychology (and this is one of the dubious aspects of psychoanalysis) can, to be sure, recognize its flawed native characteristics, but it cannot eliminate them. Understanding (them) is not the same as overcoming (them) and, again and again, we see the wisest of human beings helpless in the fact of their small follies which everyone else observes with a smile.

My fear represented the failure of the human system. It is a sad truth of our creation: Something is amiss in our design, there are loose ends of our psychology that are simply not wrapped up. My fears were the dirty secrets of evolution. They were not provided for, and I was forced to construct elaborate temples to house them.

All actors tend to be the same messed-up people.

The human race has to be bad at psychology; if it were not, it would understand why it is bad at everything else.

Space-ships and time machines are no escape from the human condition. Let Othello subject Desdemona to a lie-detector test; his jealousy will still blind him to the evidence. Let Oedipus triumph over gravity; he won't triumph over his fate.