quotations about personality
Humans are different in private than in the presence of others. While the private persona merges into the social persona in varying degrees, the union is never complete. Something is always held back.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVEN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Corrino
Personality, as we know it, is free compared with the individuality of the lower animals; but it is still weighted down with the body. There may be personalities which have not merely transcended substance, but are rid of it altogether: in all ages the theologian and the mystic have told of such "disembodied spirits," postulated by the one, felt by the other, and now the psychical investigator with his automatic writing and his cross-correspondences is seeking to give us rigorous demonstration of them. If such exist, they crown Life's progress.
JULIAN HUXLEY
"The Individual in the Animal Kingdom", From Gaia to Selfish Genes: Selected Writings in the Life Sciences
Our personality should be impenetrable even to ourselves.
FERNANDO PESSOA
The Book of Disquiet
By its very nature, all action is the projection of the personality onto the external world and since the external world is very largely made up of other human beings, it follows that any such projection of the personality will involve crossing someone else's path and bothering, hurting or trampling on others, depending on how one acts.
FERNANDO PESSOA
The Book of Disquiet
Personality is not a predictor of character. We all know people with good character and delightful personalities, but if you are like me, you also know folks who may be fun at a party, but if you need someone to have your back ... they are not the ones you call. And then there's the really good person you know you should want to date, but--eh--there's no spark. That person of good character maybe has a not-so-great personality.
BETTY RUSSELL
"Men Should Understand THIS Concept When Dating Someone New", The Good Men Project, April 20, 2016
Your personality is what's holding you back.
JASON DONNELLY
Gripped: Your Personality is What's Holding You Back
Personality is the outcome of our conditionings.
BALKRISHNA PANDAY
Personality
The nucleus of personality is the totality of "activity attitudes" toward the world.... The main characteristic of activity is its motive and the basis of personality is the individual's hierarchy of motives, particularly social motives. The first "kernels" of personality are formed in activity in the social domain because personality is socially constructed. Although all motives are initially individual, some individual motives become subordinated to social motives. The individual, to a greater or lesser degree, incorporates other people into his motive hierarchy.
ROBERT J. STERNBERG & PATRICIA RUZGIS
Personality and Intelligence
Maybe that's what a person's personality is: the difference between the inside and the outside.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
The cult of personality is the curse of modern communication. Why should we believe that the actor, the entertainer or the sportsperson, the well-born, rich (whether by talent or accident,) or just famous for being famous, have anything original, wise, or philosophical to say? Yet, smitten by celebrity, we hang upon their lips.
ANITA ROBINSON
"Cult of personality is curse of the modern age", Irish News, April 5, 2016
Personality is regarded as a collection of relatively discrete, independent, and narrow social capacities, each relevant to performance only within a specific domain of life.
DAVID C. FUNDER
Personality Judgment: A Realistic Approach to Person Perception
But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.
OSCAR WILDE
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
The World as I See it
We're starting to find genes that have an influence on personality and behaviour. I think that people have often become comfortable with the idea that genes determine, or help to determine, various particular characteristics. But the idea that there might be a genetic component of personality is not something that people have particularly looked at before.
FELIX DAY
"Genes can 'influence' personality and behaviour", Wired, April 18, 2016
Human beings are incredibly vulnerable creatures. Personality is largely molded around how people hide, protect, or defend what they feel is a personal core weakness. The first thing you have to do is recognize the other person's vulnerability.
MICHAEL MAMAS
"7 Personality Principles to Boost Office Productivity", Entrepreneur, April 18, 2016
How many friends have you lost, how many have you gained, because they glimpsed some element of your personality that shone through for only an instant, and in circumstances you could never reproduce? An illusion of water shimmering at the far bend of a highway.
KEVIN BROCKMEIER
The View from the Seventh Layer
To Jung, personality refers to the very essence of an individual's unique nature. To become a personality is to achieve wholeness--to become complete. This is a lifelong process that requires a connection to one's social world but without total conformity to it. Total conformity destroys any possibility of discovering one's uniqueness. The secret of personality growth is to live a life that integrates freely chosen social obligations while remaining true to oneself.
JIM MCMARTIN
Personality Psychology: A Student-Centered Approach
I sell the things you need to be
I'm the smiling face on your T.V.
I'm the cult of personality.
I exploit you
Still you love me
I tell you one and one makes three.
I'm the cult of personality
Like Joseph Stalin and Gandhi.
I'm the cult of personality.
LIVING COLOUR
"Cult of Personality"
Man is concentric: you have to take fold after fold off of him before you get to the centre of his personality. You must get below his animal nature, habits, customs, affections, daily life, and sometimes go away down into the heart of the man, before you know what is really in him. But when you get into the last core of these concentric rings of personality you find a sense of the infinite--a consciousness of immortality linked to something higher and better.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses, each wanting to go in different directions.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Loving Your Enemies, November 1957