Quotes from Abraham Maslow

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.

What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualizat ion.

You can see neurosis from below - as a sickness - as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends.

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

Man is a perpetually wanting animal.

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.

We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already have capacities, talents, direction, missions, callings.

The fact that people who create are good workers tends to be lost.

We may define therapy as a search for value.

Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self actualization and the love for the highest values.

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

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

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.

Language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

Expression and communication in the peak–experiences tend often to become poetic, mythical, and rhapsodic, as if this were the natural kind of language to express such states of being.

Secrecy, censorship, dishonesty, and blocking of communication threaten all the basic needs.

Only the flexibly creative person can really manage the future, Only the one who can face novelty with confidence and without fear.

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.

If you treat your children at home in the same way you treat your animals in the lab, your wife will scratch your eyes out. My wife ferociously warned me against experimenting on her babies.

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.

Become aware of internal, subjective, sub-verbal experiences, so that these experiences can be brought into the world of abstraction.

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

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.

We crave and fear becoming truly ourselves