Maslow's Quotes & Sayings

Onboarding starts with satisfying the most basic of Maslow's psychological needs: belonging. New hires shouldn't arrive to an empty cube and be forced to forage through corridors searching for a computer and the bare necessities of office life. A new hire isn't a surprise visitor from out of town. Plan for their arrival. — Jay Samit

Every human being has both sets of forces within him. One set clings to safety and defensiveness out of fear, tending to regress backward, hanging on to the past, afraid to grow away from the primitive communication with the mother's uterus and breast, afraid to take chances, afraid to jeopardize what he already has, afraid of independence, freedom and separateness. The other set of forces impels him forward toward wholeness of Self and uniqueness of Self, toward full functioning of all his capacities, toward confidence in the face of the external world at the same time that he can accept his deepest, real, unconscious Self. — Abraham H. Maslow

Besides writing music and surfing, I like to simply chill with my friends. Watching movies and going out to eat are often my prime choices for a day off. — James Maslow

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

Maslow's five values are the values for which people live when they have nothing to live for. Nothing has seized them, nothing has caught them, nothing has driven them spiritually mad and made them worth talking to. — Joseph Campbell

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

I have a lot of younger fans, obviously the choices I make often influence them. But having said that, it's kind of the best motivation in the world to stay positive and make good choices. — James Maslow

The most fortunate are those who 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 H. Maslow

Maslow might be speaking of clients I have known when he says, "self-actualized 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, however stale these experiences may be for other people." (4, p. 214) — Carl R. Rogers

Every age but ours has had its model, its ideal. All of these have been given up by our culture; the saint, the hero, the gentleman, the knight, the mystic. About all we have left is the well-adjusted man without problems, a very pale and doubtful substitute. — Abraham H. Maslow

According to Maslow, I was stuck on the second level of the pyramid, unable to feel secure in my health and therefore unable to reach for love and respect and art and whatever else, which is, utter horseshit: The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness.
Maslow's pyramid seemed to imply I was less human than other people, and most people seemed to agree with him. — John Green

We fear our highest possibility. We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments. — 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 a word if you tell me you have a personality problem I am not certain until I know you better whether to say "Good!" or "I'm sorry." It depends on the reasons. And these, it seems, may be good reasons, or they may be good reasons. — Abraham H. Maslow

Abraham Maslow, I present to you Augustus Waters, whose existential curiosity dwarfed that of his well-fed, well-loved, healthy brethren. — John Green

Looking down from the heights of Maslow's pyramid, it seems inconceivable to us that someone could actually prefer bread to freedom. — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

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

If your only tool is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail. — Abraham H. Maslow

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

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

We are simultaneously gods and worms." - Abraham Maslow — Timothy Ferriss

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 empirical fact is that self-actualizing people, our best experiencers, are also our most compassionate, our great improvers and reformers of society, our most effective fighters against injustice, inequality, slavery, cruelty, exploitation (and also are best fighters for excellence, effectiveness, competence). And it also becomes clearer and clearer that our best 'helpers' are the most fully human persons. What I may call the bodhisattvic path is an integration of self-improvement and social zeal, i.e., the best way to become a better 'helper' is to become a better person. But one necessary aspect of becoming a better person is via helping other people. So one must and can do both simultaneously. — Abraham H. 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

We crave and fear becoming truly ourselves — Abraham Maslow

Well, that's just what I'm talking about. All Maslow would need to do is rub against your legs and start purring, and you'd immediately forget all this Hitler/Card nonsense. No one does PR like a cat. Why do you think I'm so desperate to hire him? — Manny Rayner

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

It isn't normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement. — Abraham H. 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 chicken came first - God would look silly sitting on an egg. — Abraham Maslow

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

...the disappearance in our lives of a sense of the sacred. With nothing to evoke awe, wonder, or devotion, we inevitably feel empty within, Maslow contended, for these are intrinsic human needs. In a similar way, we have lost genuine heroes; the very concept of heroism has become suspect, old-fashioned, and seemingly obsolete. The same has occurred with such traditional virtues as courage, fidelity, and reverence. — Edward Hoffman

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

One guiding post to determine where the distressing issues, needs and aspirations is Maslow's Needs Hierarchy. If you can identify their fears and concerns, you can choose a story that provides hope. — Gideon For-mukwai

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

But beyond a basic minimum, the relationship between income and happiness is slight. Research bears out Maslow's analysis that the higher needs are love and belonging, esteem and self-actualisation. The most significant determinants of happiness are strong and rewarding personal relationships, a sense of belonging to a community, being valued by others and living a meaningful life. These are precisely the things in which religion specialises: sanctifying marriage, etching family life with the charisma of holiness, creating and sustaining strong communities in which people are valued for what they are, not for what they earn or own, and providing a framework within which our lives take on meaning, purpose, even blessedness. — Jonathan Sacks

I enjoy running, especially in a new city, so when I'm on tour that's always a good option. — James Maslow

Singing is what got me into everything and made me fall in love with this industry. — James Maslow

Abraham Maslow, the man who gave us Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, once said: "The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important. — Brad Hams

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

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 H. 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

To think critically, it is first maturing and distancing a bit from self, no matter what level one lives on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. — Pearl Zhu

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

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

The needs for safety, belonging, love relations and for respect can be satisfied only by other people, i.e., only from outside the person. This means considerable dependence on the environment. A person in this dependent position cannot really be said to be governing himself, or in control of his own fate. He must be beholden to the sources of supply of needed gratifications. Their wishes, their whims, their rules and laws govern him and must be appeased lest he jeopardize his sources of supply. He must be, to an extent, "other-directed," and must be sensitive to other people's approval, affection and good will. This is the same as saying that he must adapt and adjust by being flexible and responsive and by changing himself to fit the external situation. He is the dependent variable; the environment is the fixed, independent variable. — Abraham H. Maslow

During a peak experience," Maslow explained, "the individual experiences an expansion of self, a sense of unity, and meaningfulness in life. The experience lingers in one's consciousness and gives a sense of purpose, integration, self-determination and empathy. — Steven Kotler

In Maslow's pyramid of needs, Abraham Maslow demonstrates the hierarchy of human requirements, most basic at the bottom, in a diagram. If you ask me, putting people's most basic requirements in a pyramid is bloody exclusive in the first place.They're extremely difficult to build, only pharoahs are allows in them and Indiana Jones was very nearly killed trying to get the treasure out. — Russell Brand

Need for immortality should be added on top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. — Toba Beta

A true Democratic Spirit is up there with religious faith and emotional maturity and all those other top-of-the-Maslow-Pyramid-type qualities that people spend their whole lives working on. A Democratic Spirit's constituent rigor and humility and self-honesty are, in fact, so hard to maintain on certain issues that it's almost irresistibly tempting to fall in with some established dogmatic camp and to follow that camp's line on the issue and to let your position harden within the camp and become inflexible and to believe that he other camps are either evil or insane and to spend all your time and energy trying to shout over them. — David Foster Wallace

What should dictate one's life? Money? Fame? No. Friends. Love. Your life's story is formed by those around you. Choose well and share. — James Maslow

I think most of my songs are based on an emotion and in every song I write, there's at least a partial truth. — James Maslow

The key question isn't "What fosters creativity?" But why in God's name isn't everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might not be why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate?
We have got to abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle that anybody created anything. — Abraham H. Maslow

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 H. Maslow

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 H. Maslow

I like people in general, which is why it's fun for me to interact with my fans. — James Maslow

Work is of utmost importance in a person's life and not only as a means of meeting one's needs at various levels of Maslow's pyramid. Believe me, I speak from experience when I say that good, focused hard work is also one of the most effective remedies for depression. — Indu Muralidharan

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

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

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 H. Maslow

It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually. — Abraham H. Maslow

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

Everything for you stems from a physical need. Most of you think with either your belly or what's below it — Soroosh Shahrivar

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

I was friends with all different people and all different groups. And that led me to being friends with a few people who didn't even go to my school. Now I have the most amazing collection of friends of all ethnic backgrounds and upbringing and financial backgrounds. — James 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

To some extent this area was foreshadowed by pioneering humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow, who wrote about the self-actualized or fulfilled person, and Carl Rogers, who once noted that he was pessimistic about the world, but optimistic about people. — Tom Butler-Bowdon

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 H. 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

I rarely use product in my hair, and when I do I have no idea which ones, nor does it matter all that much to me. And I can't remember the last time I even used a comb, much less carried one around. — James Maslow

Abraham Maslow became a towering figure in my life. He was the inspiration for me to look at psychology from a 180-degree-turnabout position. Rather than studying what was weak, infirm, or limited in clients and make an assessment based on overcoming ailments, I began looking for the highest qualities of self-actualization and encouraging clients - and ultimately readers and listeners - to seek their own innate greatness and aspire to these pinnacles. I reasoned that if some among us could be self-actualized, then so could I and anyone else who understood that it was possible. This became a major focus of my professional life and the compass I set for myself to live the principles that Maslow delineated in his writing. — Wayne W. Dyer

One thing I love is to do children's hospital visits. — James Maslow

While I still did not know what self- actualization that sat on the top level of the pyramid meant, I could believe
that if I knew I would be able to say something positive about it as well in
my life. — Vann Chow

Most people experience both tragedy and joy in varying proportions. Any philosophy which leaves out either cannot be considered to be comprehensive. — Abraham H. 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

I would like to attend college in the future when I have time. I have always been interested in architecture, so perhaps I would pursue a degree in that or business. — James 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

Not allowing people to go through their pain, and protecting them from it, may turn out to be a kind of over-protection, which in turn implies a certain lack of respect for the integrity and the intrinsic nature and the future development of the individual. — Abraham H. 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

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. — Abraham H. Maslow

The waitress walk away. Everyone look's at each other and then laugh. The laugh it feel so cathartic. It break the ice and sudenly the mood feel like old times. They may not have money now to aford food, but they still have each other. And forget what Maslow's "heirarchey of needs" say: some time's freindship is more important than nutrient's. — Seinfeld 2000

Maslow notes that the self-actualized person has a strong desire for privacy; vehemently resists enculturation, but always has a freshness of appreciation; and has a genuine desire to help the human race. Yet when it comes down to it, in certain basic ways he is like an alien in a strange land. Very few really understand him, however much they may like him. — Wayne W. Dyer

The desire to know and to understand are themselves conative, i.e., have a striving character, and are as much personality needs as the "basic needs" we have already discussed. — Abraham H. 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

False optimism sooner or later means disillusionment, anger and hopelessness. — Abraham H. 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

What one can be, one must be! — Abraham H. Maslow

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

We cannot study creativeness in an ultimate sense until we realize that practically all the definitions that we have been using of creativeness are essentially male or masculine definitions of male or masculine products. We've left out of consideration almost entirely the creativeness of women. — 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

Maslow did not make two different pyramids, one for men and one for women. He did not differentiate in identifying what men want and what women want. — Shahla Khan