Quote collection
153 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The human being needs a framework of values, a philosophy of life, a religion or religion-surrogate to live by and understand by, in about the same sense that he needs sunlight, calcium or love."
"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?"
"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."
"The most stable, and therefore, the most healthy self-esteem is based on deserved respect from others rather than on external fame or celebrity and unwarranted adulation."
"He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail."
"People are not evil; they are schlemiels."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"What does 'happy' mean? Happiness is not a state like Vermont."
"Boys will be boys as long as there are no girls in the picture."
"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."
"Be independent of the good opinion of other people."
"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."
"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."
"The chicken came first - God would look silly sitting on an egg."
"We may define therapy as a search for value."
"In the ideal college, intrinsic education would be available to anyone who wanted it...The college would be life-long, for learning can take place all through life."
"Fear of knowing is very deeply a fear of doing."
"Human beings seem to be far more autonomous and self-governed than modern psychological theory allows for."