Quote collection
153 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
"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."
"Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth."
"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."
"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"
"A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting."
"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."