Abraham Maslow famous quotes

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.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Life #Motivational #Leadership

One's only rival is one's own potentialities. One's only failure is failing to live up to one's own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Kings #Failure #Men

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.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Life #Motivational #Fear

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

#Inspirational #Motivational #Time

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

#Wisdom #Educational #Humorous

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

#Teacher #Forever #Life Is

We fear our highest possibilities. We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments, under conditions of great courage. We enjoy and even thrill to godlike possibilities we see in ourselves in such peak moments. And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these very same possibilities.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Perfect #Thrill #Weakness

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

#Change #Perspective #Awakening

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Inspirational #Music #Peace

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

#Inspirational #Expectations #Unhappy

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.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Beautiful #Fate #Wonderful

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.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Life And Love #Ocean #Swimming

The sacred is in the ordinary...it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's own backyard...travel may be a flight from confronting the scared--this lesson can be easily lost. To be looking elsewhere for miracles is to me a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Ignorance #Miracle #Family And Friends

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.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Writing #Artist #Self

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

#Failing #Possibility

(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.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Thanksgiving #Gratitude #People

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.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Reality #People #Giving

The person in peak-experiences feels himself, more than other times, to be the responsible, active, creating center of his activities and of his perceptions. He feels more like a prime-mover, more self-determined (rather than caused, determined, helpless, dependent, passive, weak, bossed). He feels himself to be his own boss, fully responsible, fully volitional, with more "free-will" than at other times, master of his fate, an agent.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Fate #Self #Creating

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.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Self #People #Feelings

All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Change #Baby #Growth

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.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Mean #People #Common Sense

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

#Goal #Life Is Precious #Should

What does 'happy' mean? Happiness is not a state like Vermont.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Happiness #Mean #Doe

No psychological health is possible unless this essential care of the person is fundamentally accepted, loved and respected by others and by himself.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Self Esteem #Essentials #Care

One can go back toward safety or forward toward growth.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Safety #Growth #Have Faith

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

#Life #Self #Moments

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."
-- Abraham Maslow

#Motivation #Self #Average

Quitting smoking can be a very good test of ones character. Pass the test and you will have accomplished so much more than just get rid of one bad habit
-- Abraham Maslow

#Encouragement #Character #Smoking

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.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Good And Bad #Grows

Expression and communication in the peak–experiences tend often to become poetic, mythical, and rhapsodic, as if this were the natural kind of language to express such states of being.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Communication #Expression #Language

Human nature has been sold short...[humans have] a higher nature which...includes the need for meaningful work, for responsibility, for creativeness, for being fair and just, for doing what is worthwhile and for preferring to do it well.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Meaningful #Responsibility #Needs

...the great lesson is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's backyard.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Inspirational #Faith #Family And Friends

What one can be, one must be!
-- Abraham Maslow

#Inspirational #Military #Mindset

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Fear #Aspect #Godlike

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

#Inspirational #Men #Race

I was awfully curious to find out why I didn't go insane.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Insanity #Insane #Curious

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.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Hurt #People #Helpful

We may define therapy as a search for value.
-- Abraham Maslow

#May #Therapy #Values

We need not take refuge in supernatural gods to explain our saints and sages and heroes and statesmen, as if to explain our disbelief that mere unaided human beings could be that good or wise.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Wise #Hero #Saint

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

#Philosophy #Yield #Psychology

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.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Voice #Able #Way

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

#Achievement #Desire #Want

Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self actualization and the love for the highest values.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Motivation #Reality #Self

Be independent of the good opinion of other people.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Independent #People #Opinion

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.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Giving Up #Selfish #People

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

#Creativity #Creative #Soup

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

#Business #Learning #Safety

To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Life #Wisdom #Smart

What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualizat ion.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Men #Self #Ions

To the extent that language forces experiences into categories it is a screen between reality and the human being. In a word, we pay for its benefits... Therefore, while using language, as we must of necessity, we should be aware of its shortcomings.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Reality #Pay #Benefits

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

#Projects #Persons

What we call 'normal' in psychology is really a psychopathology of the average, so undramatic and so widely spread that we don't even notice it ordinarily.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Average #Psychology #Normal

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.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Stupid #Men #Trying

Religion becomes a state of mind achievable in almost any activity of life, if this activity is raised to a suitable level of perfection.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Perfection #Mind #Religion

We fear our highest possibility. We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Perfect #Glimpse #Moments

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

#Happiness #People #Important

Well why not a technology of joy, of happiness?
-- Abraham Maslow

#Technology #Joy #Why Not

The human being is so constructed that he pressed toward fuller and fuller being.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Humans

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
-- Abraham Maslow

#Honesty #Generosity #Common Sense

What is life for? Life is for you.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Healing #Life Is #What Is Life

When we free ourselves from the constraints of ordinary goals and uninformed scoffers we will find ourselves roaring off the face of the earth.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Goal #Ordinary #Roaring

The spiritual life is part of the human essence. It is a defining characteristic of human nature, without which human nature is not fully human.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Spiritual #Self Esteem #Essence

It is vital that people "count their blessings:" to appreciate what they possess without having to undergo its actual loss.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Loss #Blessing #People

We have got to abandon the sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle if anybody created anything.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Creativity #Miracle #Faces

False optimism sooner or later means disillusionment , anger and hopelessness.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Mean #Optimism #Hopelessness

Apparently one impression we are making... is that creativeness consists of lightning striking you on the head in one great glorious moment.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Creativity #Lightning #Moments

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

#Remember #Human Nature #Humans

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

#Communication #Way #Language

We can consider the process of healthy growth to be a never ending series of free choice situations, confronting each individual at every point throughout his life, in which he must choose between the delights of safety and growth, dependence and independence, regression and progression, immaturity and maturity.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Maturity #Safety #Choices

Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? ...a good question might be not why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate?
-- Abraham Maslow

#People #Might #Lost

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.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Success #Creativity #Self

If you love the truth, you'll trust it - that is, you will expect it to be good, beautiful, perfect, orderly, etc., in the long run, not necessarily in the short run.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Beautiful #Running #Long

Man is a perpetually wanting animal.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Animal #Men #Economics

The fact that people who create are good workers tends to be lost.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Work #People #Facts

Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Laughing #Sacred #Stills

The search for safety takes its clearest form... in the compulsive-obsessive neurosis... to frantically order and stabilize the world so that no unmanageable, unexpected or unfamiliar dangers will ever appear.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Order #Safety #Insecurity

We are dealing with a fundamental characteristic, inherent in human nature, a potentiality given to all or most human beings at birth, which most often is lost or buried or inhibited as the person gets enculturated.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Humanity #Fundamentals #Birth

Become aware of internal, subjective, subverbal experiences, so that these experiences can be brought into the world of abstraction, of conversation, of naming, etc. with the consequence that it immediately becomes possible for a certain amount of control to be exerted over these hitherto unconscious and uncontrollable processes.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Etc #World #Certain

The best product should be bought, the best man should be rewarded more. Interfering factors which befuddle this triumph of virtue, justice, truth, and efficiency, etc., should be kept to an absolute minimum or should approach zero as a limit.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Zero #Men #Justice

The loss of illusions and the discovery of identity, though painful at first, can be ultimately exhilarating and strengthening.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Loss #Discovery #Identity

Human beings seem to be far more autonomous and self-governed than modern psychological theory allows for.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Self #Psychological #Modern

There is, first, the desire for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for confidence in the face of the world, and for independence and freedom. Secondly, we have what we may call the desire for reputation or prestige
-- Abraham Maslow

#Achievement #Independence #Desire

A child wants some kind of undisrupted routine or rhythm. He seems to want a predictable, orderly world.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Children #Routine #World

Become aware of internal, subjective, sub-verbal experiences, so that these experiences can be brought into the world of abstraction...
-- Abraham Maslow

#Experience #World #Internals

I have discovered the missing link between the anthropoid apes and civilized men. It's us!
-- Abraham Maslow

#Men #Missing #Links

The good or healthy society would then be defined as one that permitted people's highest purposes to emerge by satisfying all their basic needs.
-- Abraham Maslow

#People #Healthy #Needs

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Communication #Way #Defense

Getting used to our blessings is one of the most important non-evil generators of human evil, tragedy and suffering.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Appreciation #Blessing #Evil

Man has his future within him, dynamically alive at this present moment.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Inspirational Life #Men #Alive

What kind of guilt comes from being true to yourself but not to others?. As we have seen, being true to yourself may at times intrinsically and necessarily be in conflict with being true to others.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Guilt #May #Be True To Yourself

The emotional reaction in the peak experience has a special flavor of wonder, of awe, of reverence, of humility and surrender before the experience as before something great.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Humility #Emotional #Special

Self-actualizing people must be what they can be.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Self #People

As one studies these preconditions, one becomes saddened by the ease with which human potentiality can be destroyed or repressed, so that a fully-human person can seem like a miracle, so improbable a happening as to be awe-inspiring. And simultaneously one is heartened by the fact that self-actualizing persons do in fact exist, that they are therefore possible, that the gauntlet of dangers can be run, that the finish line can be crossed.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Running #Self #Miracle

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

#Inspiration #Calling #Talent

Fear of knowing is very deeply a fear of doing.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Teaching #Learning #Knowing

Since my mother is the type that's called schizophrenogenic in the literature-she's the one who makes crazy people, crazy children-I was awfully curious to find out why I didn't go insane.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Mother #Children #Crazy

Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.
-- Abraham Maslow

#Human Nature #Humans