Top 15 Tom Butler-Bowdon Quotes

Anyone can get a job, but do you have a purpose?

The more choices we have, the greater the need for focus.

Most of us cherish freedom, but when we actually get the opportunity to make our own way it can be terrifying.

The contribution of humanistic psychology to better relationships is recognized by the inclusion of Carl Rogers, whose influential book reminds us that relationships cannot flower if they don’t have a climate of listening and nonjudgmental acceptance, and that empathy is the mark of a genuine person.

Trust your intuition, rather than technology, to protect you from violence.

In short, every child develops in ways that best allow them to compensate for weakness; “a thousand talents and capabilities arise from our feelings of inadequacy,” Adler noted.

Unlike other animals we are aware of our instincts, and as a result may attempt to shape or control them.

What we think we lack determines what we will become in life.

Beck’s three principles of cognitive therapy were: All our emotions are generated by our “cognitions,” or thoughts. How we feel at any given moment is due to what we are thinking about. Depression is the constant thinking of negative thoughts. The majority of negative thoughts that cause us emotional turmoil are plain wrong or at least distortions of the truth, but we accept them without question.

Character” is the unique interplay between two opposing forces: a need for power, or personal aggrandizement; and a need for “social feeling” and togetherness (in German, Gemeinschaftsgefühl).

Neo-Freudian Karen Horney believed that childhood experiences resulted in our creation of a self that “moved toward people” or “moved away from people.” These tendencies were a sort of mask that could develop into neurosis if we were not willing to move beyond them. Underneath was what she called a “wholehearted,” or real, person.

Between the stimulation received from the environment and our response, certain processes had to occur inside the brain, and cognitive researchers revealed the human mind to be a great interpreting machine that made patterns and created sense of the world outside, forming maps of reality.

Growing into an environment in which everyone else seems bigger and more powerful, every child seeks to gain what they need by the easiest route.

Immanuel Kant’s “categorical imperative” says that individual actions are to be judged according to whether we would be pleased if everyone in society took the same action.

Truly creative people work for work’s own sake, and if they make a public discovery or become famous that is a bonus.