Abraham Maslow Quotes

One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth.
Growth must be chosen again and again;
fear must be overcome again and again.

If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being,
you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.

When people appear to be something other than good and decent,
it is only because they are reacting to stress,
pain,
or the deprivation of basic human needs such as security,
love,
and self-esteem.

You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.

All of life is education and everybody is a teacher and everybody is forever a pupil.

I can feel guilty about the past,
Apprehensive about the future,but only in the present can I act.The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.

A person who makes full use of and exploits his talents,
potentialities,
and capacities.
Such a person seems to be fulfilling himself and doing the best he is capable of doing.
The self-actualized person must find in his life those qualities that make his living rich and rewarding.
He must find meaningfulness,
self-sufficiency,
effortlessness,
playfulness,
richness,
simplicity,
completion,
necessity,
perfection,
individuality,
beauty,
and truth.

If you only have a hammer,
you tend to see every problem as a nail.

A positive self image and healthy self esteem is based on approval,
acceptance and recognition from others;
but also upon actual accomplishments,
achievements and success upon the realistic self confidence which ensues.

Let people realize clearly that every time they threaten someone or humiliate or unnecessarily hurt or dominate or reject another human being,
they become forces for the creation of psychopathology,
even if these be small forces.
Let them recognize that every person who is kind,
helpful,
decent,
psychologically democratic,
affectionate,
and warm,
is a psychotheraputic force,
even though a small one.

Education is learning to grow,
learning what to grow toward,
learning what is good and bad,
learning what is desirable and undesirable,
learning what to choose and what not to choose.

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

The fact is that people are good,
Give people affection and security,
and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.

There are no perfect human beings! Persons can be found who are good,
very good indeed,
in fact,
great.
There do in fact exist creators,
seers,
sages,
saints,
shakers,
and movers...even if they are uncommon and do not come by the dozen.
And yet these very same people can at times be boring,
irritating,
petulant,
selfish,
angry,
or depressed.
To avoid disillusionment with human nature,
we must first give up our illusions about it.

Self-actualizing people have a deep feeling of identification,
sympathy,
and affection for human beings in general.
They feel kinship and connection,
as if all people were members of a single family.

One's only failure is failing to live up to one's own possibilities.

Self-actualizing people are those who have come to a high level of maturation,
health and self-fulfillment...
the values that self-actualizers appreciate include truth,
creativity,
beauty,
goodness,
wholeness,
aliveness,
uniqueness,
justice,
simplicity,
and self-sufficiency.

The most beautiful fate,
the most wonderful good fortune that can happen to any human being,
is to be paid for doing that which he passionately loves to do.

The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important.

You must want to be first-class ...meaning the best,
the very best you are capable of becoming.
If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being,
then I warn you that you'll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life.
You will be evading your own capacities,
your own possibilities.

Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of fear and need for defense) and risk (for the sake of progress and growth).
Make the growth choice a dozen times a day.

If both the physiological and the safety needs are fairly well gratified,
then there will emerge love and affection and belongingness needs,
and the whole cycle already described will repeat itself with this new centre.
Now the person will feel keenl

Every person is,
in part,
'his own project' and makes himself.

One cannot choose wisely for a life unless he dares to listen to himself,
his own self,
at each moment of his life.

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion,
for the real and for the truth.

Common sense means living in the world as it is today;
but creative people are people who don't want the world as it is today but want to make another world.

One of the goals of education should be to teach that life is precious.

Language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side...
It has revealed to us much about man's shortcomings,
his illnesses,
his sins,
but little about his potentialities,
his virtues,
his achievable aspirations or his psychological health...
We must find out what psychology might be if it could free itself from the stultifying effects of limited,
pessimistic and stingy preoccupations with human nature.

What is the good life? What is the good man? The good woman? What is the good society and what is my relation to it? What are my obligations to society? What is best for my children? What is justice? Truth? Virtue? What is my relation to nature,
to death,
to aging,
to pain,
to illness? How can I live a zestful,
enjoyable,
meaningful life? What is my responsibility to my brothers? Who are my brothers? What shall I be loyal to? What must I be ready to die for?

A stupid man behaves stupidly,
not because he wants to,
or tries to,
or is motivated to,
but simply because he is what he is.

The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.

Innocence can be redefined and called stupidity.
Honesty can be called gullibility.
Candor becomes lack of common sense.
Interest in your work can be called cowardice.
Generosity can be called soft-headedness,
and observe : the former is disturbing

We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with.
We already have capacities,
talents,
direction,
missions,
callings.

Self-actualized people...live more in the real world of nature than in the man-made mass of concepts,
abstractions,
expectations,
beliefs and stereotypes that most people confuse with the world.

We must understand love;
we must be able to teach it,
to create it,
to predict it,
or else the world is lost to hostility and to suspicion.

If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away,
I'd still swim.
And I'd despise the one who gave up.

Life could be vastly improved if we could count our blessings as self-actualizing people can and do,
and if we could retain their constant sense of good fortune and gratitude for it.

It isn't normal to know what we want.
It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.

Musicians must make music,
artists must paint,
poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves.
What human beings can be,
they must be.
They must be true to their own nature.
This need we may call self-actualization.

Whereas the average individuals "often have not the slightest idea of what they are,
of what they want,
of what their own opinions are," self-actualizing individuals have "superior awareness of their own impulses,
desires,
opinions,
and subjective reactions in general."

(Some people) have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again,
freshly and naively,
the basic goods of life,
with awe,
pleasure,
wonder,
and even ecstasy.

The study of crippled,
stunted,
immature,
and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy

Creativity is a characteristic given to all human beings at birth.

We must remember that knowledge of one’s own deep nature is also simultaneously knowledge of human nature in general.

The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.

What one can be,
one must be!

The way to recover the meaning of life and the worthwhileness of life is to recover the power of experience,
to have impulse voices from within,
and to be able to hear these impulse voices from within — and make the point: This can be done.

I think of the self-actualizing man not as an ordinary man with something added,
but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away.
The average man is a full human being with dampened and inhibited powers and capabilities.