My early childhood prepared me to be a social psychologist. I grew up in a South Bronx ghetto in a very poor family. From Sicilian origin, I was the first person in my family to complete high school, let alone go to college.
Interpretation
Early life experiences shape one's career and perspectives, especially in understanding social psychology.
Philip Zimbardo reflects on how his challenging upbringing in the South Bronx and his family background molded him into a social psychologist. His unique journey from poverty to achieving educational milestones highlights the impact of environment and determination in pursuing a career that helps understand societal behaviors.
In practice
This quote can be used during a graduation speech to inspire students from underprivileged backgrounds.
Before I knew that a man could kill a man, because it happens all the time. Now I know that even the person with whom you've shared food, or whom you've slept, even he can kill you with no trouble. The closest neighbor can kill you with his teeth: that is what I have Learned since the genocide, and my eyes no longer gaze the same on the face of the world.
Boys' brains are being digitally rewired for change, novelty, excitement and constant arousal. That means they're totally out of sync in traditional classes, which are analog, static, interactively passive.
Evil is knowing better, but willingly doing worse.
Time perspective is one of the most powerful influences on all of human behavior. We're trying to show how people become biased to being exclusively past-, present- or future-oriented.
Many cults start off with high ideals that get corrupted by leaders or their board of advisors who become power-hungry and dominate and control members' lives. No group with high ideals starts off as a 'cult'; they become one when their errant ways are exposed.
Heroes are Ordinary People whose social action is Extra-Ordinary/ who ACT when others are passive, who give up EGO-centrism for SOCIO-centrism.
Kids who have an understanding of how and why their feelings are what they are are much more likely to talk to us about what's happening, and they have better skills to work it out.
Tuesday—we had school for the first time. Madame O’Malley had a moment of silence at the beginning of French class, a class that was always punctuated with long moments of silence, and then asked us how we were feeling. “Awful,” a girl said. “En français,” Madame O’Malley replied. “En français.
People are the common denominator of progress. So no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills,and the other familiar furniture of economic development. But we are coming to realize that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first.
Free curiosity is of more value in learning than harsh discipline.
Our aim is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his innermost core.
The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.