Quotes from M. Scott Peck

Through grace we are helped not to stumble and through grace we know that we are being welcomed. What more can we ask?

Any genuinely loving relationship is one of mutual psychotherapy.

the healthy self, however, must always be vigilant against the laziness of the sick self that still lurks within us.

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.

If necessary, they will even kill to escape the pain of their own spiritual growth. As the integrity of their sick self is threatened by the spiritual health of those around them, they will seek by all manner of means to crush and demolish the spiritual health that may exist near them. I define evil, then, as the exercise of

The neophyte scientist, recently come or converted to the world view of science, can be every bit as fanatical as a Christian crusader or a soldier of Allah.

For any single thing of importance, there are multiple reasons.

But the biggest problem of map-making is not that we have to start from scratch, but that if our maps are to be accurate we have to continually revise them.

He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

It's interesting, Ted," I said, "that whenever something significantly painful happens to you, you rail against God, you rail against what a shitty, terrible world it is. But when something good happens to you, you guess you're lucky. A minor tragedy and it's God's fault. A miraculous blessing and it's a bit lucky. What do you make of that?

As Benjamin Franklin said, "Those things that hurt, instruct.

define dependency as the inability to experience wholeness or to function adequately without the certainty that one is being actively cared for by another. Dependency in physically healthy adults is pathological—it is sick, always a manifestation of a mental illness or defect.

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

Spiritually evolved people, by virtue of their discipline, mastery and love, are people of extraordinary competence, and in their competence they are called on to serve the world, and in their love they answer the call. They are inevitably, therefore, people of great power, although the world may generally behold them as quite ordinary people, since more often than not they will exercise their power in quiet or even hidden ways.

The feeling of being valuable—"I am a valuable person"—is essential to mental health and is a cornerstone of self-discipline. It is a direct product of parental love. Such a conviction must be gained in childhood; it is extremely difficult to acquire it during adulthood. Conversely, when children have learned through the love of their parents to feel valuable, it is almost impossible for the vicissitudes of adulthood to destroy their spirit.

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?

We must always consider our personal discomfort relatively unimportant and, indeed, even welcome it in the service of the search for truth.

To confront one's beloved is to assume a position of moral or intellectual superiority over the loved one, at least so far as the issue at hand is concerned. Yet genuine love recognizes and respects the unique individuality and separate identity of the other person.

Sooner or later, if they are to be healed, they must learn that the entirety of one's adult life is a series of personal choices, decisions.

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.

Yet even more important than role modeling is love.

And then I realized that Mrs. X. was actually not able to distinguish between Susan and herself. What she felt, Susan must feel. She was using Susan as a vehicle to express her own needs. She was not doing this consciously or maliciously; on an emotional level she could not, in fact, perceive Susan as having an identity separate from her own.

In the succinctly elegant words of Carl Jung, "Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering."2

Neurotics, because of their willingness to assume responsibility, may be quite excellent parents if their neuroses are relatively mild and they are not so overwhelmed by unnecessary responsibilities that they have scant energy left for the necessary responsibilities of parenthood.