Quotes from Carl Rogers

What I am is good enough if I would only be it openly.

Life, at its best, is a flowing, changing process in which nothing is fixed.

Neurotic behavior is quite predictable. Healthy behavior is unpredictable.

To be original, or different, is felt to be "dangerous."

Adults who think that children must be manipulated for their own good have developed the attitude of a controlling parent who lacks faith in himself, the child, or humanity or himself.

In a person who is open to experience each stimulus is freely relayed through the nervous system, without being distorted by any process of defensiveness.

Don't be the ammunition wagon, be the rifle... knowledge exists primarily for use.

A person cannot teach another person directly; a person can only facilitate another's learning

The purpose of adult education is to help them to learn, not to teach them all you know and thus stop them from learning.

Learning of all kinds goes on best, lasts best, and tends to lead itself on more when it grows out of a real focus of interest in the learner.

I believe that the testing of the student's achievements in order to see if he meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the implications of therapy for significant learning.

The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.

Life is about Being & Becoming.

There are as many "real worlds" as there are people!

The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.

Both the young and the old are almost completely useless in our modern society, and are made keenly aware of that uselessness. They have no place. They are private, isolated - and hopeless.

With the price of life these days, you've got to get everything for free you can.

We in the West seem to have made a fetish out of complete individual self-sufficiency, of not needing help, of being completely private except in a very few selected relationships.

The basic idea behind teaching is to teach people what they need to know.

When I look at the world I'm pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.

In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?

The facts are always friendly, every bit of evidence one can acquire, in any area, leads one that much closer to what is true.

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.

In a person who is open to experience each stimulus is freely relayed through the nervous system, without being distorted by any process of defensiveness.