The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.
Thomas MannRead
People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.
Interpretation
Understanding others requires insight into their desires and intentions.
This quote by Thomas Mann suggests that to comprehend why people act the way they do, one must consider their underlying goals, needs, and motives. It emphasizes the importance of empathy and perspective in interpersonal relationships, implying that behavior is often a reflection of what individuals strive to achieve or fulfill in their lives.
In practice
A psychologist might use this quote to explain the significance of understanding a patient's background.
The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.
Stupid β well, there are so many kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.
It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.
I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh.
Literature... is the union of suffering with the instinct for form.
The Freudian theory is one of the most important foundation stones for an edifice to be built by future generations, the dwelling of a freer and wiser humanity.
Depression is rage spread thin.
It's during dream sleep where we start to actually take the sting out of difficult, even traumatic, emotional experiences that we've been having. And sleep almost divorces that emotional, bitter rind from the memory experiences that we've had during the day.
We know that the great majority of people have a strong need for authority which it can admire, to which it can submit, and which dominates and sometimes even ill-treats it.
There are absolutely ways to manipulate behavior, because our behavior is endlessly being manipulated by the world around us.
Self-pity, a dominant characteristic of sociopaths, is also the characteristic that differentiates heroic storytelling from psychological rumination. When you talk about your experiences to shed light, you may feel wrenching pain, grief, anger, or shame. Your audience may pity you, but not because you want them to.
It's my profession to bring people from various outlying districts of the mind to the normal. There seems to be a general feeling it's the place where they ought to be. Sometimes I don't see the urgency myself.
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