Boris Sidis Quotes

Psychology is the science of psychic states both as to content and form, regarded from an objective standpoint, and brought in relation to the living corporeal individual.

The general tendency of evolution is from structure to function, from bondage to freedom of the individual elements.

The freedom of the seemingly false opinion and our tolerance of it and our willingness to meet with it in the open help test the validity of truth while keeping alive the critical sense which is the main spring of all advancement of human thought and is the vital point, the very soul, of all human progress.

Science is the description of phenomena and the formulation of their relations.

The psycho-physiological hypothesis is both inductively and deductively the sine qua non of the science of psychology.

The fact that psychology postulates an external material world and studies it in so far as it comes to be reflected in consciousness, points to another postulate which psychology must assume in addition, namely, the existence of an inner world consciousness.

Self-preservation is the central aim of all life-activities.

It is time that the medical and teaching profession should realize that functional neurosis is not congenital, not inborn, not hereditary, but is the result of a defective, fear-inspiring education in early child life.

If ceaseless vigilance is the price of liberty, more so is it true that ceaseless criticism of ever new opinions and ever new views, however distasteful, bizarre, and paradoxical, is the price of truth.

Superstitions, and especially the early cultivation of religion, with its “fear of the Lord” and of unknown mysterious agencies, are especially potent in the development of the instinct of fear. Even the early cultivation of morality and conscientiousness, with their fears of right and wrong, often causes psychoneurotic states in later life. Religious, social, and moral taboos and superstitions, associated with apprehension of threatening impending evil, based on the fear instinct, form the germs of psychopathic affections.

No opinion should be disdained and scorned.

It is not the citizen, or a taxpayer, or voter, or office-holder, but the cultivated, free individual who is the true aim of all social progress.

The man of genius whether as artist or thinker requires a mass of accidental variations to select from and a rigidly selective process of attention.

The tendency of life is not the preservation of the species, but solely the preservation of each individual organism, as long as it is in existence at all, and is able to carry on its life processes.

The course of evolution is to a greater integration of similarly functioning ganglia.