Psychological Reactance Quotes

You want me to do something... tell me I can't do it.

We always strive after what is forbidden, and desire the things refused us.

People do what they are told not to do. It happens time and time again. Here on the frozen tundra, it is known as the Tongue on the Frozen Pump Handle principle.

the one thing I've observed over the years is the best way to get an actor to not want to play a certain role is to offer it to them. That makes them say, "Well, maybe it's not that good. These guys don't want me to do this..."

When you stop people from doing certain things, there is a good chance that they will do exactly what they have been told to abjure. That is how human nature is.

The second I tell myself I have to do something, I'm sure to do the opposite.

The fastest way to get me to go out and do something is to tell me no way I can do it.

It's a simple quality of human nature that people prefer to choose to do things rather than be ordered to do them. In fact, as soon as you tell me I have to do something - give a speech, attend a banquet, go to Cannes - I immediately start looking for ways to avoid doing it.

And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.

Now he found out a new thing--namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.

If you deprive yourself of something, you're going to want it more.

If I'm like, 'Oh, this is not something that I want to do,' that means I have to do it. That's always a good motivation.

If you know a little bit the psychology of human beings, you have to understand that if you say something you should not do, then everybody wants to do it.

The more I resist anything, the stronger it gets.

Forbid us something, and that thing we desire.

If you tell kids they can't have something, that's what they want.

It's one of the most basic laws of human nature, isn't it? The more we are denied something, the more we want it. The more silence given to this or that topic, the more power.

Why is it that most things you might willingly do under other circumstances become distasteful when you have no choice?

If you tell me I can't have something then that just makes me want it more.