Nancy Etcoff Quotes

Poland, Psychologist
1955

Nancy Etcoff is a psychologist and researcher at Harvard University. Etcoff has maintained a private practice in psychology, and taught classes about the mind, brain, behavior, and aesthetics at Harvard Medical School. Etcoff is best known for her 1999 book Survival of the Prettiest: the Science of Beauty arguing for an biological basis for beauty linked to evolutionary psychology.

Appearance is the most public part of the self. It is our sacrament, the visible self that the world assumes to be a mirror of the invisible, inner self.

Nancy Etcoff
Beauty draws us in. We can't stop looking or listening or touching. It takes us outside ourselves and it motivates us. It's essential to life and to happiness.

Nancy Etcoff
- Life
- Happiness
- Beauty

The formula for a happy marriage is five positive remarks, or interactions, for every one negative.

Nancy Etcoff
When abused children under court protection were studied in California and Massachusetts, it turned out that a disproportionate number of them were unattractive...abused kids had head and face proportions that made them look less infantile and cute.

Nancy Etcoff
- Children
- Face
- Cute
Beauty ensnares hearts, captures minds, and stirs up emotional wildfires. From Plato to pinups, images of human beauty have catered to a limitless desire to see and imagine an ideal human form.

Nancy Etcoff
- Beauty
- Minds
- Captures
The idea that beauty is unimportant is the real beauty myth.

Nancy Etcoff
- Beauty
- Myth
- Unimportant
Beauty is equal parts flesh and imagination: we imbue it with our dreams, saturate it with our longings.

Nancy Etcoff
- Imagination
- Beauty
- Parts
The idea that beauty is unimportant or a cultural construct is the real beauty myth. We have to understand beauty, or we will always be enslaved by it.

Nancy Etcoff
- Beauty
- Understand
- Myth

Throughout human history people have scarred, painted, pierced, padded, stiffened, plucked, and buffed their bodies in the name of beauty.

Nancy Etcoff
- History
- Bodies
- Painted
Physical beauty is like athletic skill: it peaks young.

Nancy Etcoff
- Beauty
- Young
- Skill