Quotes About Potential

mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental well-being. We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging man with a potential meaning for him to fulfill. It is only thus that we evoke his will to meaning from its state of latency.

Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.

How beautiful the world could be!

Tension, striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal are positive; trying to close the gap between what one is and what one should become.

We are reminded again of that remark of Goethe's which we have already quoted, and which we called the finest maxim for any kind of psychotherapy: "If we take people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat them as if they were what they ought to be, we help them to become what they are capable of becoming.

By his love, he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. By his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.

In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.

The Meaning of Suffering We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement.

Man is by no means fully free. Man is not free from determinants. Man's freedom is a finite freedom, not freedom from conditions; his freedom lies in the potentiality for taking a stand toward whatever conditions might confront him.

For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement.

Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.

Human potential at its best is to transform a tragedy into a personal triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement.

If you treat people to a vision of themselves, if you apparently overrate them, you make them become what they are capable of becoming.

It isn't the past which holds us back, it's the future; and how we undermine it, today.

There are no disasters. Just opportunities we haven't found yet.

I remember one morning... getting up at dawn... there was such a sense of possibility! You know? That feeling? And... and I remember thinking to myself: 'So this is the beginning of happiness...' 'This is where it starts!' 'And, of course, there'll always be more.' Never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning, It was happiness. It was the moment...

They are able who think they are able.

possunt, quia posse videntur.

Furens quid femina possit

Quienes pueden, pueden porque piensan que pueden.

I am not so gifted as at one time seemed likely.

It is one of those invaluable seeds, from which, since it is impossible to have every experience fully, one can grow something that represents other people's experiences. Often one has to make do with seeds; the germs of what might have been, had one's life been different.

Her horizon seemed to her limitless. There were all the places she had not seen;

Judith Shakespeare] lives in you and in me [...] she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh.