Abraham Maslow Quotes & Sayings

You can see neurosis from below - as a sickness - as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends. — Abraham Maslow

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

I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead. — Abraham Maslow

A van backed through my windscreen into my wife's face. — Abraham Maslow

An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my vehicle and vanished. — Abraham Maslow

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

What shall we think of a well-adjusted slave? — Abraham Maslow

It is unfortunate to consider all lawyers as natural Satanists many are just dumb. — Abraham Maslow

Education can become a self-fulfilling activity, liberating in and of itself. — Abraham Maslow

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

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

Being a full human being is difficult, frightening, and problematical. — Abraham Maslow

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

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

Even when adults do feel their safety to be threatened, we may not be able to see this on the surface. Infants will react in a fashion as if they were endangered, if they are disturbed or dropped suddenly, startled by loud noises, flashing light — Abraham Maslow

In order for us to become truly happy, that which we can become, we must become. — Abraham Maslow

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

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

The major motivation theories by which most men live can lead them only to depression and cynicism. — Abraham Maslow

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

A pedestrian hit me and went under my car. — Abraham Maslow

The job is, if we are willing to take it seriously, to help ourselves to be more perfectly what we are, to be more full, more actualizing, more realizing in fact, what we are in potentiality. — Abraham Maslow

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

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

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

We crave and fear becoming truly ourselves — Abraham Maslow

Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation. — Abraham Maslow

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

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

The peaker learns surely and certainly that life can be worthwhile, that it can be beautiful and valuable. There are ends in life, i.e., experiences which are so precious in themselves as to prove that not everything is a means to some end other than itself. — Abraham Maslow

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

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. — Abraham Maslow

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

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

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

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

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. — Abraham Maslow

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

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

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

With a tree, all the growth takes place at the growing tips. Humanity is exactly the same. All the growth takes place in the growing tip: among that one percent of the population. It's made up of pioneers, the beginners. That's where the action is. — Abraham Maslow

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Abraham Maslow

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? — Abraham Maslow

Only the flexibly creative person can really manage the future, Only the one who can face novelty with confidence and without fear. — Abraham Maslow

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

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

[Concerning] the usual contempt with which an orthodox analytic group treats all outsiders and strangers ... I urge you to think of the young psychoanalysts as your colleagues, collaborators and partners and not as spies, traitors and wayward children. You can never develop a science that way, only an orthodox church. — Abraham Maslow

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

The theory of science which permits and encourages the exclusion of so much that is true and real and existent cannot be considered a comprehensive science. — Abraham Maslow

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. — Abraham Maslow

What we need is a system of thought - you might even call it a religion - that can bind humans together. A system that would fit the Republic of Chad as well as the United States: a system that would supply our idealistic young people with something to believe in. — Abraham Maslow

My feeling is that the concept of creativeness and the concept of the healthy, self actualizing, fully human person seem to be coming closer and closer together, and may perhaps turn out to be the same thing — Abraham Maslow

Boys will be boys as long as there are no girls in the picture. — Abraham Maslow

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

We do what we are and we are what we do ... — Abraham Maslow

If you treat your children at home in the same way you treat your animals in the lab, your wife will scratch your eyes out. My wife ferociously warned me against experimenting on her babies. — Abraham Maslow

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

I may say that (Being) love, in a profound but testable sense, creates the partner. it gives him a self-image, it gives him self-acceptance, a feeling of love-worthiness, all of which permit him to grow. It is a real question whether the full development of the human being is possible without it. — Abraham Maslow

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

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. — Abraham Maslow

I have learned the novice can often see things that the expert overlooks.
All that is necessary is not to be afraid of making mistakes, or of appearing naive. — Abraham Maslow

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

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

When all you own is a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail. — Abraham Maslow

Work is that which you dislike doing but perform for the sake of external rewards. At school, this takes the form of grades. In society, it means money, status, privilege. — Abraham Maslow

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

There seems no intrinsic reason why everyone shouldn't be (self-actualising). Apparently every baby has possibilities for self-actualisation, but most get it knocked out of them ... I think of the self-actualising man not as an ordinary man with something added, but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away. — Abraham Maslow

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

With my childhood, it's a wonder I'm not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends. — Abraham Maslow

It is as necessary for man to live in beauty rather than ugliness as it is necessary for him to have food for an aching belly or rest for a weary body. — Abraham Maslow

People are not evil; they are schlemiels. — Abraham Maslow

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

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

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

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

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

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 — Abraham Maslow

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

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

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

If I were a Negro, I'd be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I'd rather go down with my flag flying. If you're weak or crippled, or you can't speak out or fight back in some way, then people don't hesitate to treat you badly. — Abraham Maslow

Creative people are all there, totally immersed, fascinated and absorbed in the present, in the current situation, in the here-now, with the matter-in-hand. — Abraham Maslow

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

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

The test of a man is: does he bear apples? Does he bear fruit? — Abraham Maslow

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

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. — Abraham Maslow

Love, safety, belongingness and respect from other people are almost panaceas for the situational disturbances and even for some of the mild character disturbances. — Abraham Maslow

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

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

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

If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you're just one more deluded Pollyanna. — Abraham Maslow

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

Good psychology should include all the methodological techniques, without having loyalty to one method, one idea, or one person. — Abraham Maslow

Rioting is a childish way of trying to be a man, but it takes time to rise out of the hell of hatred and frustration and accept that to be a man you don't have to riot. — Abraham Maslow