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Boris Sidis Quotes (1867-1923)
About Boris Sidis
Boris Sidis (October 12, 1867 – October 24, 1923) was a Ukraine-born American psychologist and psychiatrist who studied under William James at Harvard University. His areas of study included hypnosis, suggestion, and the subconscious; multiple personality, sleep, laughter, and the treatment of psychopathic disease.
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“Self-preservation is the central aim of all life-activities.”
“Science is the description of phenomena and the formulation of their relations.”
“The course of evolution is to a greater integration of similarly functioning ganglia.”
“Greatness of individuality is inversely proportional to the mass of the social aggregate.”
“The principle of recognition of evil under all its guises is at the basis of the true education of man.”
“Psychology must postulate uniformity of interrelation of physical, physiological, and psychic processes.”
“Suggestibility varies as the amount of disaggregation, and inversely as the unification of consciousness.”
“The general tendency of evolution is from structure to function, from bondage to freedom of the individual elements.”
“Mental synthesis of psychic content in the unity of a moment-consciousness is a fundamental principle of psychology.”
“The psycho-physiological hypothesis is both inductively and deductively the sine qua non of the science of psychology.”
“Human institutions depend for their existence and stability on the impulse of self-preservation and its close associate, — the fear instinct.”
“The main source of psychopathic diseases is the fundamental instinct of fear with its manifestations, the feeling of anxiety, anguish, and worry.”
“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 recognition, the diagnosis, and the preservation of psychopathic individuals account for the apparent increase of neurotics in civilized communities.”
“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 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.”
“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 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.”
“If society is to progress on a truly humanistic basis, without being subject to mental epidemics and virulent social diseases to which the subconscious falls an easy victim, the personal consciousness of every individual should be cultivated to the highest degree possible.”
“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.”
“A social aggregate which has chosen the fatal path of organic evolution must succumb to the same law of organic development to which all organisms are subject, namely greater and greater organization, increase of structure, greater differentiation, decrease of critical, personal, consciousness, loss of individual liberty, increased activity of the subconscious forces, falling into a state of somnambulism which can only be redeemed by revolution or by death.”
Boris Sidis Quotes by Topic
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Boris Sidis on Subconscious 2 quotes
“Suggestibility varies as the amount of disaggregation, and inversely as the unification of consciousness.”
Boris Sidis on Laughter
“Society and its ideal average, normal mediocrity with its pleasing, mannerly, commonplace platitudes may have its fling of jeering at genius for not conforming to social usage and for breaking away from the well-trodden paths of social ruts. Far more effective and deadly are the stones of ridicule cast by the hand of genius at the Philistine Goliath, strong in his brute social power, but dull of wits. Social laughter is momentary, soon burns itself out and passes away like the fire and smokes of straw, but genius shakes the very skies with its lasting, inextinguishable laughter.”
Boris Sidis on Social power
“Society and its ideal average, normal mediocrity with its pleasing, mannerly, commonplace platitudes may have its fling of jeering at genius for not conforming to social usage and for breaking away from the well-trodden paths of social ruts. Far more effective and deadly are the stones of ridicule cast by the hand of genius at the Philistine Goliath, strong in his brute social power, but dull of wits. Social laughter is momentary, soon burns itself out and passes away like the fire and smokes of straw, but genius shakes the very skies with its lasting, inextinguishable laughter.”
About Boris Sidis
Boris Sidis (October 12, 1867 – October 24, 1923) was a Ukraine-born American psychologist and psychiatrist who studied under William James at Harvard University. His areas of study included hypnosis, suggestion, and the subconscious; multiple personality, sleep, laughter, and the treatment of psychopathic disease.