Psychology - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

- H. P. Lovecraft, ''The Call of Cthulhu'' (1928)

Subconscious minds are no less fallible than the objective mind.

- Edgar Rice Burroughs, Pirates of Venus (1934)

A psychiatrist is the last man to see about a thing like that. They know everything about a man, except what he is and what makes him tick. Besides, did you ever see a worry-doctor that was sane himself ?

- Robert A. Heinlein, Beyond This Horizon (1942)

The function of a psychiatrist is to tell the difference between those who are reasonable and those who merely talk and act reasonably.

- Mary Chase, Harvey (play, 1944)

Yardsticks of scientific psychology are used to measure a man, and yet they give no indication at all of the inner spirit of him. [. . .] Knowing about a man, and knowing a man are two entirely different things.

- Mark Clifton, ''What Have I Done?'' (1952)

A lot of human thinking occurred beneath the level of consciousness, down in the darker regions of the mind where it was not allowed to become conscious lest it bring shame to the thinker. And perhaps he had reasoned it all out in that mental half-world where thoughts are inner ghosts, haunting the possessed man with vague stirrings of uneasiness, leading him into inexplicable behavior.

- Walter M. Miller, Jr., ''Way of a Rebel'' (1954)

Thanks to technology, the reasons for many of the old social problems have passed, and along with them went many of the reasons for psychic distress. But between the black of yesterday and the white of tomorrow is the great gray of today, filled with nostalgia and fear of the future, which cannot be expressed on a purely material plane, is now being represented by a willful seeking after historical anxiety-modes . . .

- Roger Zelazny, ''HeWho Shapes'' (1965)

While psychologists drink and only grow angry, psychiatrists have been known to drink, grow angry, and break things.

- Roger Zelazny, ''HeWho Shapes'' (1965)

The waking brain is perpetually lapped by the unconscious.

- BrianW. Aldiss, ''Man in His Time'' (1966)

The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, removed as a result of ancient prohibitions.

- Italo Calvino, ''Cybernetics and Ghosts'' (1967), translated by Patrick Creagh (1987)

I - I'm afraid, Excellency! We're tampering with the mightiest instrument in the universe: a human brain!

- Keith Laumer, ''Test to Destruction'' (1967)

''It bedevils me sometimes why I am the only one to notice the analogy between historical geology and depth psychology,'' Terrence Burdock mused as they grew lightly profound around the campfire. ''The isostatic principle applies to the mind and the under-mind as well as it does to the surface and undersurface of the earth. The mind has its erosions and weatherings going on along with its deposits and accumulations. It also has its upthrusts and its stresses. It floats on a similar magma. In extreme cases it has its volcanic eruptions and its mountain building.'' ''And it has its glaciations,'' Ethel Burdock said, and perhaps she was looking at her husband in the dark.

- R. A. Lafferty, ''Continued on Next Rock'' (1970)

My knowledge of the human psyche is as yet imperfect. Certain areas won't yield to computation.

- Poul Anderson, ''Goat Song'' (1972)

Everyone, after all, is always ''psychoanalysing'' everyone else; it is part of our culture, the basic form of modern romance, in which one party tries to invade the psyche of another, the victim agreeing provisionally to assist the invader. Rather, in a way, like an old vampire movie.

- Thomas M. Disch, ''Things Lost'' (1972)

We have treatments for disturbed persons, Nicholas. But, at least for the time being, we have no treatment for disturbing persons.

- GeneWolfe, ''The Death of Doctor Island'' (1974)

The best maze is the mind.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''Mazes'' (1975)

It is amazing how banal most people's minds are. [. . .] I used to think how wonderful other people's minds would be, how wonderful it was going to be to share in all the different worlds, the different colors of their passions and ideas. How naпve I was!

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''The Diary of the Rose'' (1976)

In politics the authorities must lead and be followed, but in psychological medicine it is a little different, a doctor cannot ''cure'' the patient, the patient ''cures'' himself with our help, this is not contradictory to Positive Thinking.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''The Diary of the Rose'' (1976)

You know the simple psychological truth, Charles, we're always accusing others of our own flaws.

- Alfred Bester, ''Galatea Galante'' (1979)

Warning: Therapy can be dangerous to your health. Especially if you are the therapist.

- Suzy McKee Charnas, ''The Unicorn Tapestry'' (1980)

Psychotherapy has become a branch of applied biochemistry.

- Poul Anderson, ''The Saturn Game'' (1981)

Gillian Taylor: Sure you won't change your mind? Spock: Is there something wrong with the one I have?

- Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, Harve Bennett, and Nicholas Meyer, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (film, 1986)

Looking into the capacities of my own mind was like peering into some parallel universe where the laws of sense did not operate and anything was possible.

- George Turner, Drowning Towers (1987)

Until you confront the dark things inside you, they make you helpless. They are your weaknesses.

- Storm Constantine, ''Immaculate'' (1991)

Every therapist on Earth was also in therapy; it was part of the job.

- Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars (1992)

There was a fridge-magnet on the thermos that said i'm not okay, you're not okay - but hey, that's okay.

- William Gibson, Virtual Light (1993)

The mind is not a box that can be simply unlocked and opened; it's a beehive with a million different departments.

- Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris, and David Hayter, X2: X-Men United (film, 2003)