Carl Rogers Quotes

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

A second characteristic of the process which for me is the good life, is that it involves an increasingly tendency to live fully in each moment. I believe it would be evident that for the person who was fully open to his new experience, completely without defensiveness, each moment would be new.

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.

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

The sense of community does not arise out of collective movement, nor from conforming to some group direction. Quite the contrary. Each individual tends to use the opportunity to become all that he or she can become. Separateness and diversity - the uniqueness of being "me" - are experienced

Facilitative attitudes (and skills) can help a therapist gain entry into the group Freedom from a desire to control the outcome, and respect for the capacity of the group, and skills in releasing individual expression Openness to all attitudes no matter how extreme or unrealistic they may seem Acceptance of the problems experienced by the group where they are clearly defined as issues Allowance of the freedom of choices in direction, either for the group or individuals particularly in the near future

Loneliness is a barrier that prevents one from uniting with the inner self.

I prize the privilege of being alone.

The only reality I can possibly know is the world as I perceive it at this moment. The only reality you can possibly know is the world as you see it at this moment. And the only certainty is that those perceived realities are different. There are as many "real worlds" as there are people!

Growth occurs when individuals confront problems, struggle to master them, and through that struggle develop new aspects of their skills, capacities, views about life.

The state of empathy, or being empathic, is to perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person.

If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.

To perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the "as if" condition. Thus, it means to sense the hurt or the pleasure of another as he senses it and to perceive the causes thereof as he perceives them, but without ever losing the recognition that it is as if I were hurt or pleased and so forth.

Although the client-centered approach had its origin purely within the limits of the psychological clinic, it is proving to have implications, often of a startling nature, for very diverse fields of effort.

Over the years, however, the research evidence keeps piling up, and it points strongly to the conclusion that a high degree of empathy in a relationship is possibly the most potent and certainly one of the most potent factors in bringing about change and learning.

His experiencing is process in nature, feeling the new in each situation and interpreting it anew, interpreting it in terms of the past only to the extent that the now is identical with the past.

If I can listen to what he can tell me, if I can understand how it seems to him; if I can see its personal meaning for him, if I can sense the emotional flavor which it has for him, then I will be releasing potent forces of change in him.

If the time comes when our culture tires of the endless homicidal feuds, despairs of the use of force and war as a means of bringing peace, becomes discontent with the half-lives that its members are living - only then will our culture seriously look for alternatives.

This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-hearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one's potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life.

I think my deepest criticism of the educational system ... is that it's all based upon a distrust of the student. Don't trust him to follow his own leads; guide him; tell him what to do; tell him what he should think; tell him what he should learn. Consequently at the very age when he should be developing adult characteristics of choice and decision making, when he should be trusted on some of those things, trusted to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes, he is, instead, regimented and shoved into a curriculum, whether it fits him or not.

One of the most satisfying experiences I know is fully to appreciate an individual in the same way I appreciate a sunset. When I look at a sunset ... I don't find myself saying, 'Soften the orange a little more on the right hand corner, and put a bit more purple along the base, and use a little more pink in the cloud color ... ' I don't try to control a sunset. I watch it with awe as it unfolds.

I have come to realize that being trustworthy does not demand that I be rigidly consistent but that I be dependably real.

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.

Each person is an island unto himself, in a very real sense; and he can only build bridges to other islands if he is first of all willing to be himself and permitted to be himself.

Life is about Being & Becoming

I have come to recognize that being trustworthy does not demand that I be rigidly consistent but that I be dependably real ... Can I be expressive enough as a person that what I am will be communicated unambiguously?

Experience is the highest authority.

No other person's ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience.

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

It is a direction not a destination.

The action of the child inventing a new game with his playmates; Einstein formulating a theory of relativity; the housewife devising a new sauce for the meat, a young author writing his first novel; all of these are in terms of definition, Creative, and there is no attempt to set them in some order of more or less Creative.

Don't be a damned ammunition wagon. Be a rifle!

Man's inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively.

Empathy is a special way of coming to know another and ourself, a kind of attuning and understanding. When empathy is extended, it satisfies our needs and wish for intimacy, it rescues us from our feelings of aloneness.

Most of us consist of two separated parts, trying desperately to bring themselves together into an integrated soma, where the distinctions between mind and body, feelings and intellect, would be obliterated.

The education situation which most effectively promotes significant learning is one in which (1) threat to the self of the learner is reduced to a minimum and (2) differential perception of the field of experience is facilitated

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

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

I have learned that in any significant or continuing relationship, feelings which are persistent had best be expressed. If they are expressed as feelings owned by me, the result may be temporarily upsetting but ultimately far more rewarding than any attempt to deny or conceal them.

The only person who cannot be helped is that person who blames others.

The genuinely significant creation, whether an idea, or a work of art, or a scientific discovery, is most likely to be seen at first as erroneous, bad, or foolish. Later it may be seen as obvious, something self-evident to all. Only still later does it receive its final evaluation as a creative contribution. It seems clear no contemporary mortal can satisfactorily evaluate a creative product at the time it is formed, and this statement is increasingly true the greater the novelty of the creation.

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.

Neurotic behavior is quite predictable. Healthy behavior is unpredictable.

Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience. It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming me.

If it is possible genuinely to meet and discover each other as persons, actually to empathize with and understand both the cultural beliefs and political views of each other –then I think the obscured future may be penetrated with some clear rays of light that we may realistically hope for a better world.

I was forced to stretch my thinking, to realize that sincere and honest people could believe in very divergent religious doctrines.