100 Psychology Quotes that Will Teach You Something About Yourself

By Sckylar Gibby-Brown | Published November 18, 2022

These psychology quotes will help you understand yourself and inspire you to tap into your potential.

Psychology is the study of the mind.

One of the newest branches of science, psychology, studies human thought.

Tell us your favorite psychology quote in the comment section below.

What are the benefits of reading these psychology quotes?

From a psychological perspective, quotes can motivate us to achieve our goals, give us insight into ourselves and perspective on those around us, and inspire contentment.

Researchers in this field seek to understand:

why we do the things we do
what our personality has to do with our choices
how and why we develop into the beings that we are

Studies also focus on our emotions, stress, and almost every other part of the human condition.

Use this list of psychology quotes to learn something new about yourself today.

If you like this article, we suggest you explore our most popular quotes article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily encouragement.

Check out more inspirational quotes on our motivational quotes category page.

Psychology quotes about attitude

1. “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” – Winston Churchill

2. “Happiness is the only thing that multiplies when you share it.” – Albert Schweitzer

3. “It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.” – Lucille Ball

4. “I’ve always believed that you can think positively just as well as you can think negatively.” – Sugar Ray Robinson

5. “Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.” – Mark Twain

6. “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” – Ernest Hemingway

7. “For success, attitude is equally as important as ability.” – Harry F. Banks

8. “Becoming is better than being.” – Carol S. Dweck

9. “I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 things that do not work.” — Thomas Edison

10. The brain is wider than the sky.” — Emily Dickinson

Psychology quotes about happiness

11. “If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be unhappy for the rest of your life.” – Abraham Maslow

12. “Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.” – Carl G. Jung

13. “Happiness is not out there for us to find. The reason that it’s not our there is that it’s inside us.” – Sonja Lyubomirsky

14. “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” — William James

15. “We are so made, that we can only derive intense enjoyment from a contrast and only very little from a state of things.” — Sigmund Freud

16. “Once you start making the effort to ‘wake yourself up’—that is, be more mindful in your activities—you suddenly start appreciating life a lot more.” – Robert Biswas-Diener

17. “I believe compassion to be one of the few things we can practice that will bring immediate and long-term happiness to our lives.” – Dalai Lama

18. “Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.” – Lou Holtz

19. “Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it.” – Andy Rooney

20. “The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.” – Louisa May Alcott

21. “Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.” – William James

22. “You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.” – Brian Tracy

23. “A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities; an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.” – Harry Truman

24. “To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness.” – Julian Barnes

Also, read these Jordan Peterson quotes that will inspire you to improve your life.

Psychology quotes about the self and human condition

25. “We know what we are but not what we may be.” — Shakespeare

26. “We are what we are because we have been what we have been, and what is needed for solving the problems of human life and motives is not moral estimates but more knowledge.” – Sigmund Freud

27. “If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society.” – Jean Piaget

28. “When we encounter an unexpected challenge of threat, the only way to save ourselves is to hold on tight to the people around us and not let go.” – Shawn Achor

29. “The truth is, bad things don’t affect us as profoundly as we expect them to. That’s true of good things, too. We adapt very quickly to either.” – Daniel Gilbert

30. “Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” – Thomas Jefferson

31. “Compassion does not render people tearful idlers, moral weaklings, or passive onlookers; but individuals who will take on the pain of others, even when given the chance to skip out on such difficult action or in anonymous conditions.” – Dacher Keltner

Motivational psychology quotes

32. “Every person on this earth is full of great possibilities that can be realized through imagination, effort, and perseverance.” – Scott Barry Kaufmann

33. “It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.” – William James

34. “Everything can be taken from a man, but the last of the human freedoms: to choose one’s attitudes in any given set of circumstances.” – Viktor Frankl

35. “I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.” — Abraham Lincoln

36. “The best way to find out whether you’re on the right path? Stop looking at the path.” – Marcus Buckingham

37. “Be content with what you have. Rejoice in how things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking the whole world belongs to you.” – Lao Tzu

38. “When we are open to new possibilities, we find them. Be open and skeptical of everything.” –Todd Kashdan

39. “The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.” – Carl Rogers

40. “Great spirits have often overcome violent opposition from mediocre minds.” – Albert Einstein

41. “When I look at the world I’m pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.” – Carl Rogers

Psychology quotes that make you think

42. “Don’t become a mere recorder of facts but try to penetrate the mystery of their origin.” — Ivan Pavlov

43. “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” — Shakespeare

44. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” — Noam Chomsky

45. “Education survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.” — B.F. Skinner

46. There is in every child at every stage a new miracle of vigorous unfolding.” — Erik Erikson

47. “Much learning does not teach understanding.” — Heraclitus

48. “The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.” — Stanley Milgram

49. “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

50. “Life doesn’t make any sense without interdependence. We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for us all.” – Erik Erikson

51. “If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.” – Mo Willems

More Psychology quotes and sayings

52. “Nothing in the world is so compelling to the emotions as the mind of another human being.” – Margaret Floy Washburn

53. “We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” – William Shakespeare

54. If you discovered something that made you tighten inside, you had better try to learn more about it.” – Nicholas Sparks

55. “When you want to know how things really work, study them when they’re coming apart.” – William Gibson

56. “Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again.” – Charles Dickens

57. “We forget very easily what gives us pain.” – Graham Greene

58. “Life can show up no other way than that way in which you perceive it.” – Neale Donald Walsh

59. “The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.” – Wilhelm Reich

60. “If you want to be proud of yourself, then do things in which you can take pride.” – Karen Horney

Insightful psychology quotes

61. “I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.” ― Daniel Keyes

62. “According to Madam Pomfrey, thoughts could leave deeper scars than almost anything else.” ― J.K. Rowling

63. “The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.” ― Carl Gustav Jung

64. “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” ― Arthur Schopenhauer

65. “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” ― Abraham Maslow

66. “How hurtful it can be to deny one’s true self and live a life of lies just to appease others.” ― June Ahern

67. “Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not. ” ― Carl G. Jung

68. “A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.” ― Daniel Kahneman

69. “Sometimes, if you want to change a man’s mind, you have to change the mind of the man next to him first.” ― Megan Whalen Turner

70. “Usually when we hear or read something new, we just compare it to our own ideas. If it is the same, we accept it and say that it is correct. If it is not, we say it is incorrect. In either case, we learn nothing.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh

More psychology quotes to learn and think about

71. If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” ― Wayne Dyer

72. “A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.” ― Carl Jung

73. “We must not allow other people’s limited perceptions to define us.” ― Virginia Satir

74. “The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others.” ― Erik Erikson

75. All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” ― Havelock Ellis

76. “A mind cannot be independent of culture.” ― Lev Vygotsky

77. “The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.” ― Nathaniel Branden

78. “Sometimes you make the right decision, sometimes you make the decision right.” ― Phil McGraw

79. “I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the time.” ― Anna Freud

80. “If you want to change attitudes, start with a change in behavior.” ― William Glasser

Positive Psychology Quotes To Keep You Going

81. “It is not primarily our physical selves that limit us but rather our mindset about our physical limits.” ― Ellen J. Langer

82. “A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.” — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

83. “Love and work are to people what water and sunshine are to plants.” — Jonathan Haidt

84. “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it.” — Daniel Kahneman

95. “Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.” — Edward de Bono

96. “We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.” — Chuck Palahniuk

97. “Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous.” — Brené Brown

98. “Hope has proven a powerful predictor of outcome in every study we’ve done so far.” — Charles Rick Snyder

99. “Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.” — Sigmund Freud

100. “Discussing positive experiences leads to heightened well-being, increased overall life satisfaction, and even more energy.” — Nathaniel M. Lambert