M. Scott Peck Quotes & Sayings

The times have changed. To move with them I had to give it up. I do not miss it. I thought I would, but I don't. — M. Scott Peck

The group made the salesman aware in no uncertain terms that his tendency to avoid problem-solving by ignoring a problem in the hope that it would go away was in itself his major problem. — M. Scott Peck

Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs — M. Scott Peck

The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. — M. Scott Peck

To function successfully in our complex world it is necessary for us to possess the capacity not only to express our anger but also not to express it. Moreover, we must possess the capacity to express our anger in different ways. At times, for instance, it is necessary to express it only after much deliberation and self-evaluation. At other times it is more to our benefit to express it immediately and spontaneously. Sometimes it is best to express it coldly and calmly; at other times loudly and hotly. — M. Scott Peck

Yet even more important than role modeling is love. — M. Scott Peck

We are daily bombarded with new information as to the nature of reality. If we are to incorporate this information, we must continually revise our maps, and sometimes when enough new information has accumulated, we must make very major revisions. The process of making revisions, particularly major revisions, is painful, sometimes excruciatingly painful. And herein lies the major source of many of the ills of mankind. — M. Scott Peck

The proper management of one's feelings clearly lies along a complex (and therefore not simple or easy) balanced middle path, requiring constant judgment and continuing adjustment. Here the owner treats his feelings (slaves) with respect, nurturing them with good food, shelter and medical care, listening and responding to their voices, encouraging them, inquiring as to their health, yet also organizing them, limiting them, deciding clearly between them, redirecting them and teaching them, all the while leaving no doubt as to who is the boss. This is the path of healthy self-discipline. — M. Scott Peck

What happens when one has striven long and hard to develop a working view of the world, a seemingly useful, workable map, and then is confronted with new information suggesting that the view is wrong and the map needs to be largely redrawn? The painful effort required seems frightening, almost overwhelming. What we do more often than not, and usually unconsciously, is to ignore the new information. Often this act of ignoring is much more than passive. We may denounce the new information as false, dangerous, heretical, the work of the devil. We may actually crusade against it, and even attempt to manipulate the world so as to make it conform to our view of reality. Rather than try to change the map, an individual may try to destroy the new reality. — M. Scott Peck

Falling in love is not an extension of one's limits or boundaries; it is a partial and temporary collapse of them. — M. Scott Peck

The principal form that the work of love takes is attention. When we love another person we give him or her our attention; we attend to that person's growth. — M. Scott Peck

The symptoms and the illness are not the same thing. The illness exists long before the symptoms. Rather than being the illness, the symptoms are the beginning of its cures. The fact that they are unwanted makes them all the more a phenomenon of grace-a gift of god, a message from the unconscious, if you will, to initiate self-examination and repair. — M. Scott Peck

What people get admired and appreciated for in community are their soft skills: their sense of humor and timing, their ability to listen, their courage and honesty, their capacity for empathy. — M. Scott Peck

Servant-leadership is more than a concept, it is a fact. Any great leader, by which I also mean an ethical leader of any group, will see herself or himself as a servant of that group and will act accordingly. — M. Scott Peck

The life of wisdom must be a life of contemplation combined with action. — M. Scott Peck

An unconscious, gentle process whereby people who want to be loving attempt to be so by telling little white lies, by withholding some of the truth about themselves and their feelings in order to avoid conflict. Pseudocommunity is conflict-avoiding; true community is conflict-resolving. — M. Scott Peck

Consciousness and Healing
To proceed very far through the desert, you must be willing to meet existential suffering and work it through. In order to do this, the attitude toward pain has to change. This happens when we accept the fact that everything that happens to us has been designed for our spiritual growth. — M. Scott Peck

The feeling of being valuable - 'I am a valuable person'- is essential to mental health and is a cornerstone of self-discipline. — M. Scott Peck

As Benjamin Franklin said, 'Those things that hurt, instruct.' It is for this reason that wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems. — M. Scott Peck

It is in the giving up of self that human beings can find the most ecstatic and lasting, solid, durable joy of life. And it is death that provides life with all its meaning. This "secret" is the central wisdom of religion. The process of giving up the self (which is — M. Scott Peck

Transference is that set of ways of perceiving and responding to the world which is developed in childhood and which is usually entirely appropriate to the childhood environment (indeed, often life-saving) but which is inappropriately transferred into the adult environment. — M. Scott Peck

Life is difficult. This is the great truth, one of the greatest truths-it is a great truth because once we see this truth, we transcend it. — M. Scott Peck

Indeed, if one can say that one has built genuinely loving relationships with a spouse and children, then one has already succeeded in accomplishing more than most people accomplish in a lifetime. — M. Scott Peck

I define love thus: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth. — M. Scott Peck

Discipline is wisdom and vice versa. — M. Scott Peck

Any genuinely loving relationship is one of mutual psychotherapy. — M. Scott Peck

Balancing is a discipline precisely because the act of giving something up is painful. — M. Scott Peck

There is no virtue inherent in un-constructive suffering. — M. Scott Peck

I have learned nothing in twenty years that would suggest that evil people can be rapidly influenced by any means other than raw power. They do not respond, at least in the short run, to either gentle kindness or any form of spiritual persuasion with which I am familiar. — M. Scott Peck

Since [narcissists] deep down, feel themselves to be faultless, it is inevitable that when they are in conflict with the world they will invariably perceive the conflict as the world's fault. Since they must deny their own badness, they must perceive others as bad. They project their own evil onto the world. They never think of themselves as evil, on the other hand, they consequently see much evil in others. — M. Scott Peck

Nothing has been accomplished. By casting away their responsibility they may feel comfortable with themselves, but they have ceased to solve the problems of living, have ceased to grow spiritually, and have become dead weight for society.

M. Scott Peck. The Road Less Traveled (Kindle Locations 499-501). — M. Scott Peck

Community is and must be inclusive. The great enemy of community is exclusivity. Groups that exclude others because they are poor or doubters or divorced or sinners or of some different race or nationality are not communities; they are cliques
actually defensive bastions against community. — M. Scott Peck

Scientists are dedicated to asking questions in the search for truth. But they too are human, and like all humans, they would like their answers to be clean and clear and easy. In their desire for simple solutions, scientists are prone to fall into two traps as they question the reality of God. The first is to throw the baby out with the bath water. And the second is tunnel vision. There is clearly a lot of dirty bath water surrounding the reality of God. Holy wars. Inquisitions. Animal sacrifice. Human sacrifice. Superstition. Stultification. Dogmatism. Ignorance. Hypocrisy. Self-righteousness. Rigidity. Cruelty. Book-burning. Witch-burning. Inhibition. Fear. Conformity. Morbid guilt. Insanity. The list is almost endless. But is all this what God has done to humans or what humans have done to God? It is abundantly evident that belief in God is often destructively dogmatic. Is the problem, then, that humans tend to believe in God, or is the problem that humans tend to be dogmatic? — M. Scott Peck

If being loved is your goal, you will fail to achieve it. The only way to be assured of being loved is to be a person worthy of love, and — M. Scott Peck

It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. — M. Scott Peck

The result is an attitude on the part of many scientists of not only skepticism but outright rejection of what cannot be measured. It is as if they were to say, "What we cannot measure, we cannot know; there is no point in worrying about what we cannot know; therefore, what cannot be measured is unimportant and unworthy of our observation." Because of this attitude many scientists exclude from their serious consideration all matters that are - or seem to be - intangible. Including, of course, the matter of God. This — M. Scott Peck

Benjamin Franklin said, "Those things that hurt, instruct. — M. Scott Peck

The will to grow is in essence the same phenomenon as love. Love is the will to extend oneself for spiritual growth. Genuinely loving people are, by definition, growing people. — M. Scott Peck

Laziness is love's opposite. — M. Scott Peck

It is precisely because I valued myself that I was unwilling to remain miserable in a school and whole social environment that did not fit my needs. It is because the housewife had regard for herself that she refused to tolerate any longer a marriage that so totally limited her freedom and repressed her personality. It is because the businessman cared for himself that he was no longer willing to nearly kill himself in order to meet the expectations of his mother. — M. Scott Peck

I guess if you want to know one single thing I'm about, it's that I'm against easy answers. — M. Scott Peck

Ultimately love is everything. — M. Scott Peck

In any case, when we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems, we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us. It is for this reason that in chronic mental illness we stop growing, we become stuck. And without healing, the human spirit begins to shrivel. — M. Scott Peck

For godhood and the hope for mankind, and within each of us is the original sin of laziness, the ever-present force of entropy pushing us back to childhood, to the womb and to the swamps from which we have evolved. — M. Scott Peck

To nourish the spirit the body must also be nourished. — M. Scott Peck

When we cling, often forever, to our old patterns of thinking and behaving, we fall to negotiate any crisis, to truly grow up, and to experience the joyful sense of rebirth that accompanies the successful transition into greater maturity. — M. Scott Peck

It must be said that parental decisions are difficult, and that children often do "grow out of it." But it almost never hurts to try to help them grow out of it or to look more closely at the problem. And while children often "grow out of it," often they do not; and as with so many problems, the longer children's problems are ignored, the larger they become and the more painful and difficult to solve. — M. Scott Peck

Life is complex.
Each one of us must make his own path through life. There are no self-help manuals, no formulas, no easy answers. The right road for one is the wrong road for another ... The journey of life is not paved in blacktop; it is not brightly lit, and it has no road signs. It is a rocky path through the wilderness. — M. Scott Peck

The time and the quality of the time that their parents devote to them indicate to children the degree to which they are valued by their parents ... When children know that they are valued, when they truly feel valued in the deepest parts of themselves, then they feel valuable. This knowledge is worth more than any gold. — M. Scott Peck

But the reality of life is such that at times one person does know better than the other what is good for the other, and in actuality is in a position of superior knowledge or wisdom in regard to the matter at hand. Under these circumstances the wiser of the two does in fact have an obligation to confront the other with the problem. — M. Scott Peck

Third, this unitary definition of love includes self-love with love for the other. Since I am human and you are human, to love humans means to love myself as well as you. — M. Scott Peck

Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it. — M. Scott Peck

Another characteristic of human nature - perhaps the one that makes us most human - is our capacity to do the unnatural, to transcend and hence transform our own nature. — M. Scott Peck

But the fact of the matter is that everyone has an explicit or implicit set of ideas and beliefs as to the essential nature of the world. — M. Scott Peck

When I am with a group of human beings committed to hanging in there through both the agony and the joy of community, I have a dim sense that I am participating in a phenomenon for which there is only one word ... "glory." — M. Scott Peck

You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time. — M. Scott Peck

We know a great deal more about the causes of physical disease than we do about the causes of physical health. — M. Scott Peck

Unwittingly, evil serves as a beacon to warn others away from its own shoals. Because most of us have been graced by an almost instinctive sense of horror at the outrageousness of evil, when we recognize its presence, our own personalities are honed by the awareness of its existence. Our consciousness of it is a signal to purify ourselves. It was evil, for instance, that raised Christ to the cross, thereby enabling us to see him from afar. Our personal involvement in the fight against evil in the world is one of the ways we grow. — M. Scott Peck

Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems ... create our courage and wisdom. — M. Scott Peck

America's greatest sin is the refusal to delay gratification. — M. Scott Peck

The problem of unmet expectations in marriage is primarily a problem of stereotyping. Each and every human being on this planet is a unique person. Since marriage is inevitably a relationship between two unique people, no one marriage is going to be exactly like any other. Yet we tend to wed with explicit visions of what a "good" marriage ought to be like. Then we suffer enormously from trying to force the relationship to fit the stereotype and from the neurotic guilt and anger we experience when we fail to pull it off. — M. Scott Peck

It is said that "neurotics make themselves miserable; those with character disorders make everyone else miserable." Chief among the people character-disordered parents make miserable are their children. As in other areas of their lives, they fail to assume adequate responsibility for their parenting. They tend to brush off their children in thousands of little ways rather than provide them with needed attention. — M. Scott Peck

True listening involves bracketing, a setting aside of the self. — M. Scott Peck

We live our lives in the eye of God, and not at the periphery but at the center of His vision, His concern. — M. Scott Peck

God. But we are hardly lost in the universe. To the contrary, the reality of grace indicates humanity to be at the center of the universe. This time and space exists for us to travel through. When my patients lose sight of their significance and are disheartened by the effort of the work we are doing, I sometimes tell them that the human race is in the midst of making an evolutionary leap. "Whether or not we succeed in that leap," I say to them, "is your personal responsibility." And mine. The universe, this stepping-stone, has been laid down to prepare a way for us. But we ourselves must step across it, one by one. Through — M. Scott Peck

It may sound strange to laymen, but psychotherapists are familiar with the fact that people are routinely terrified by mental health. — M. Scott Peck

Human beings are poor examiners, subject to superstition, bias, prejudice, and a PROFOUND tendency to see what they want to see rather than what is really there. — M. Scott Peck

Do what you feel called to do, but also be prepared to accept that you don't necessarily know what you're going to learn. Be willing to be surprised by forces beyond your control, and realize that a major learning on the journey is the art of surrender. — M. Scott Peck

I believe it would be considerably healthier for us to dare to live without a reason for many things than with reasons that are simplistic. — M. Scott Peck

Evil people hate the light because it reveals themselves to themselves. They hate goodness because it reveals their badness; they hate love because it reveals their laziness. They will destroy the light, the goodness, the love in order to avoid the pain of such self-awareness. — M. Scott Peck

Being about spiritual growth, this book is inevitably about the other side of the same coin: the impediments to spiritual growth. Ultimately there is only the one impediment, and that is laziness. If we overcome laziness, all the other impediments will be overcome. If we do not overcome laziness, none of the others will be hurdled. — M. Scott Peck

We must be willing to fail and to appreciate the truth that often Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived. — M. Scott Peck

The key to community is the acceptance, in fact the celebration of our individual and cultural differences. It is also the key to world peace — M. Scott Peck

Idealists are people who believe in the potential of human nature for transformation ... The most essential attribute of human nature is its mutability and freedom from instinct ... it is always within our power to change our nature. So it is actually the idealists who are on the mark and the realists who are off base. — M. Scott Peck

There really are people, and institutions made up of people, who respond with hatred in the presence of goodness and would destroy the good insofar as it is in their power to do so. They do this not with conscious malice but blindly, lacking awareness of their own evil - indeed, seeking to avoid any such awareness. — M. Scott Peck

Most of us operate from a narrower frame of reference than that of which we are capable, failing to transcend the influence of our particular culture, our particular set of parents and our particular childhood experience upon our understanding. It is no wonder, then, that the world of humanity is so full of conflict. We have a situation in which human beings, who must deal with each other, have vastly different views as to the nature of reality, yet each one believes his or her own view to be the correct one since it is based on the microcosm of personal experience. And to make matters worse, most of us are not even fully aware of our own world views, much less the uniqueness of the experience from which they are derived. — M. Scott Peck

ascertain, Jersey had no knowledge of demonology. At this point, all I could do was tell her and her family that I was very uncertain about the case, and that, after I got home, I would be — M. Scott Peck

What does a life of total dedication to truth mean? It means, first of all, a life of continuous and never-ending stringent self-examination. We know the world only through our relationship to it. Therefore, to know the world, we must not only examine it but we must simultaneously examine the examiner. — M. Scott Peck

Not only do self-love and love of others go hand in hand but ultimately they are indistinguishable. — M. Scott Peck

By far the most important form of attention we can give our loved ones is listening ... True listening is love in action. — M. Scott Peck

They fail to consult or listen to the God within them, the knowledge of rightness which inherently resides within the minds of all mankind. We make this failure because we are lazy. It is work to hold these internal debates. They require time and energy just to conduct them. And if we take them seriously - if we seriously listen to this "God within us" - we usually find ourselves being urged to take the more difficult path, the path of more effort rather than less. To conduct the debate is to open ourselves to suffering and struggle. Each and every one of us, more or less frequently, will hold back from this work, will also seek to avoid this painful step. Like Adam and Eve, and every one of our ancestors before us, we are all — M. Scott Peck

All human interactions are opportunities either to learn or to teach. — M. Scott Peck

One of the problems that people commonly have in their adult relationships if they have never received a firm commitment from their parents is the "I'll desert you before you desert me" syndrome. This syndrome will take many forms or disguises. One form was Rachel's frigidity. Although it was never on a conscious level, what Rachel's frigidity was expressing to her husband and previous boyfriends was, "I'm not going to give myself to you when I know damn well that you're going to dump me one of these days." For Rachel, "letting go," sexually or otherwise, represented — M. Scott Peck

When we love someone our love becomes demonstrable or real only through our exertion - through the fact that for that someone (or for ourself) we take an extra step or walk an extra mile. Love is not effortless. To the contrary, love is effortful. — M. Scott Peck

Children cannot grow to psychological maturity in an atmosphere of unpredictability, haunted by the specter of abandonment. Couples cannot resolve in any healthy way the universal issues of marriage - dependency and independency, dominance and submission, freedom and fidelity, for example - without the security of knowing that the act of struggling over these issues will not itself destroy the relationship. — M. Scott Peck

The feeling of being valuable is a cornerstone of self-discipline because when you consider yourself valuable you will take care of yourself- including things like using your time well. In this way, self-discipline is self-caring. — M. Scott Peck

Evil was defined as the use of power to destroy the spiritual growth of others for the purpose of defending and preserving the integrity of our own sick selves. In short, it is scapegoating. We scapegoat not the strong but the weak. For the evil to so misuse their power, they must have the power to use in the first place. They must have some kind of dominion over their victims. The most common relationship of dominion is that of parent over child. Children are weak, defenseless, and trapped in relation to their parents. They are born in thrall to their parents ... They are simply not free or powerful enough to escape. — M. Scott Peck

And since life poses an endless series of problems, life is always difficult and is full of pain as well as joy. — M. Scott Peck

Most people want peace without the aloneness of [spiritual] power. And they want the self-confidence of adulthood without having to grow up. — M. Scott Peck

We cannot let another person into our hearts or minds unless we empty ourselves. We can truly listen to him or truly hear her only out of emptiness. — M. Scott Peck

If I truly love another, I will obviously order my behavior in such a way as to contribute the utmost to his or her spiritual growth. — M. Scott Peck

Love is the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth ... Love is as love does. Love is an act of will
namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love. — M. Scott Peck

There is no worse bitterness than to reach the end of your life and realized you have not lived. — M. Scott Peck

My time was my responsibility. It was up to me and me alone to decide how I wanted to use and order my time. — M. Scott Peck

If someone is determined not to risk pain, then such a person must do without many things: [ ... ] - all that makes life alive, meaningful and significant. — M. Scott Peck

Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit. — M. Scott Peck

Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience. — M. Scott Peck

While I generally find that great myths are great precisely because they represent and embody great universal truths (and will explore several such myths later in this book), the myth of romantic love is a dreadful lie. Perhaps it is a necessary lie in that it ensures the survival of the species by its encouragement and seeming validation of the falling-in-love experience that traps us into marriage. But as a psychiatrist I weep in my heart almost daily for the ghastly confusion and suffering that this myth fosters. Millions of people waste vast amounts of energy desperately and futilely attempting to make the reality of their lives conform to the unreality of the myth. — M. Scott Peck

Dependency may appear to be love because it is a force that causes people to fiercely attach themselves to one another. But in actuality it is not love; it is a form of antilove. It has its genesis in a parental failure to love and it perpetuates the failure. It seeks to receive rather than to give. It nourishes infantilism rather than growth. It works to trap and constrict rather than to liberate. Ultimately it destroys rather than builds relationships, and it destroys rather than builds people. — M. Scott Peck

But I already saw no great difference between the psyche and spirituality. To amass knowledge without becoming wise is not my idea of progress in therapy. — M. Scott Peck