Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.

— Gordon W. Allport

Indeed, the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better and better problems.

— Gordon W. Allport

It is not that we have class prejudice, but only that we find comfort and ease in our own class. And normally there are plenty of people of our own class, or race, or religion to play, live, and eat with, and to marry.

— Gordon W. Allport

People it seems, are busy leading their lives into the future, whereas psychology, for the most part, is busy tracing them into the past.

— Gordon W. Allport

Philosophically speaking, values are the termini of our intentions. We never fully achieve them.

— Gordon W. Allport

The outlines of the needed psychology of becoming can be discovered by looking within ourselves; for it is knowledge of our own uniqueness that supplies the first, and probably the best, hints for acquiring orderly knowledge of others.

— Gordon W. Allport

To understand what a person is, it is necessary always to refer to what he may be in the future, for every state of the person is pointed in the direction of future possibilities.

— Gordon W. Allport