Boris Sidis Quotes

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.

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

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.

The main source of psychopathic diseases is the fundamental instinct of fear with its manifestations, the feeling of anxiety, anguish, and worry.

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

Suggestibility varies as the amount of disaggregation, and inversely as the unification of consciousness.

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 recognition, the diagnosis, and the preservation of psychopathic individuals account for the apparent increase of neurotics in civilized communities.

No opinion should be disdained and scorned.

Human institutions depend for their existence and stability on the impulse of self-preservation and its close associate, — the fear instinct.

Greatness of individuality is inversely proportional to the mass of the social aggregate.

Mental synthesis of psychic content in the unity of a moment-consciousness is a fundamental principle 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.

The principle of recognition of evil under all its guises is at the basis of the true education of man.

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