Abraham Maslow Quotes

What is life for? Life is for you. ~ Abraham Maslow

The study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy ~ Abraham Maslow

With a tree, all the growth takes place at the growing tips. Humanity is exactly the same. All the growth takes place in the growing tip: among that one percent of the population. It's made up of pioneers, the beginners. That's where the action is. ~ Abraham Maslow

With my childhood, it's a wonder I'm not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends. ~ Abraham Maslow

Religion becomes a state of mind achievable in almost any activity of life, if this activity is raised to a suitable level of perfection. ~ Abraham Maslow

If you love the truth, you'll trust it - that is, you will expect it to be good, beautiful, perfect, orderly, etc., in the long run, not necessarily in the short run. ~ Abraham Maslow

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication. ~ Abraham Maslow

The best product should be bought, the best man should be rewarded more. Interfering factors which befuddle this triumph of virtue, justice, truth, and efficiency, etc., should be kept to
an absolute minimum or should approach zero as a limit. ~ Abraham Maslow

People are not evil; they are schlemiels. ~ Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow became a towering figure in my life. He was the inspiration for me to look at psychology from a 180-degree-turnabout position. Rather than studying what was weak, infirm, or limited in clients and make an assessment based on overcoming ailments, I began looking for the highest qualities of self-actualization and encouraging clients - and ultimately readers and listeners - to seek their own innate greatness and aspire to these pinnacles. I reasoned that if some among us could be self-actualized, then so could I and anyone else who understood that it was possible. This became a major focus of my professional life and the compass I set for myself to live the principles that Maslow delineated in his writing. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

The person in peak-experiences feels himself, more than other times, to be the responsible, active, creating center of his activities and of his perceptions. He feels more like a prime-mover, more self-determined (rather than caused, determined, helpless, dependent, passive, weak, bossed). He feels himself to be his own boss, fully responsible, fully volitional, with more "free-will" than at other times, master of his fate, an agent. ~ Abraham Maslow

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

I may say that (Being) love, in a profound but testable sense, creates the partner. it gives him a self-image, it gives him self-acceptance, a feeling of love-worthiness, all of which permit him to grow. It is a real question whether the full development of the human being is possible without it. ~ Abraham Maslow

Creativity is a characteristic given to all human beings at birth. ~ Abraham Maslow

The human being is so constructed that he pressed toward fuller and fuller being. ~ Abraham Maslow

I'm someone who likes plowing new ground, then walking away from it. I get bored easily. For me, the big thrill comes with the discovering. ~ Abraham Maslow

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

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. ~ Abraham Maslow

The theory of science which permits and encourages the exclusion of so much that is true and real and existent cannot be considered a comprehensive science. ~ Abraham Maslow

Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? ... a good question might be not why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate? ~ Abraham Maslow

Human beings seem to be far more autonomous and self-governed than modern psychological theory allows for. ~ Abraham Maslow

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. ~ Abraham Maslow

The spiritual life is part of the human essence. It is a defining characteristic of human nature, without which human nature is not fully human. ~ Abraham Maslow

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. ~ Abraham Maslow

Creative people are all there, totally immersed, fascinated and absorbed in the present, in the current situation, in the here-now, with the matter-in-hand. ~ Abraham Maslow

Apparently one impression we are making ... is that creativeness consists of lightning striking you on the head in one great glorious moment. ~ Abraham Maslow

The fact is that people are good, Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior. ~ Abraham Maslow

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting. ~ Abraham Maslow

Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation. ~ Abraham Maslow

If I were a Negro, I'd be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I'd rather go down with my flag flying. If you're weak or crippled, or you can't speak out or fight back in some way, then people don't hesitate to treat you badly. ~ Abraham Maslow

Plateau experiencing can be achieved, learned, earned by long hard work ... A transient glimpse is certainly possible in the peak experiences which may, after all, come sometimes to anyone. But, so to speak, to take up residence on the high plateau ... that is another matter altogether. That tends to be a lifelong effort. ~ Abraham Maslow

All of life is education and everybody is a teacher and everybody is forever a pupil. ~ Abraham Maslow

A van backed through my windscreen into my wife's face. ~ Abraham Maslow

In Maslow's pyramid of needs, Abraham Maslow demonstrates the hierarchy of human requirements, most basic at the bottom, in a diagram. If you ask me, putting people's most basic requirements in a pyramid is bloody exclusive in the first place.They're extremely difficult to build, only pharoahs are allows in them and Indiana Jones was very nearly killed trying to get the treasure out. ~ Russell Brand

The test of a man is: does he bear apples? Does he bear fruit? ~ Abraham Maslow

An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my vehicle and vanished. ~ Abraham Maslow

One can go back toward safety or forward toward growth. ~ Abraham Maslow

Many times when we help we do not really serve ... Serving is also different from fixing. One of the pioneers of the Human Potential Movement, Abraham Maslow, said, If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.' Seeing yourself as a fixer may cause you to see brokenness everywhere, to sit in judgment of life itself. When we fix others, we may not see their hidden wholeness or trust the integrity of the life in them. Fixers trust their own expertise. When we serve, we see the unborn wholeness in others; we collaborate with it and strengthen it. Others may then be able to see their wholeness for themselves for the first time. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

What shall we think of a well-adjusted slave? ~ Abraham Maslow

The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important. ABRAHAM MASLOW ~ Mark Sanborn

We crave and fear becoming truly ourselves ~ Abraham Maslow

The human being needs a framework of values, a philosophy of life, a religion or religion-surrogate to live by and understand by, in about the same sense that he needs sunlight, calcium or love. ~ Abraham Maslow

When all you own is a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail. ~ Abraham Maslow

Human nature has been sold short ... [humans have] a higher nature which ... includes the need for meaningful work, for responsibility, for creativeness, for being fair and just, for doing what is worthwhile and for preferring to do it well. ~ Abraham Maslow

The peaker learns surely and certainly that life can be worthwhile, that it can be beautiful and valuable. There are ends in life, i.e., experiences which are so precious in themselves as to prove that not everything is a means to some end other than itself. ~ Abraham Maslow

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

What we need is a system of thought - you might even call it a religion - that can bind humans together. A system that would fit the Republic of Chad as well as the United States: a system that would supply our idealistic young people with something to believe in. ~ Abraham Maslow

Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred. ~ Abraham Maslow

If both the physiological and the safety needs are fairly well gratified, then there will emerge love and affection and belongingness needs, and the whole cycle already described will repeat itself with this new centre. Now the person will feel keenl ~ Abraham Maslow

When we free ourselves from the constraints of ordinary goals and uninformed scoffers we will find ourselves roaring off the face of the earth. ~ Abraham Maslow

It is vital that people "count their blessings:" to appreciate what they possess without having to undergo its actual loss. ~ Abraham Maslow

We can consider the process of healthy growth to be a never ending series of free choice situations, confronting each individual at every point throughout his life, in which he must choose between the delights of safety and growth, dependence and independence, regression and progression, immaturity and maturity. ~ Abraham Maslow

Common sense means living in the world as it is today; but creative people are people who don't want the world as it is today but want to make another world. ~ Abraham Maslow

We are simultaneously gods and worms." - Abraham Maslow ~ Timothy Ferriss

As one studies these preconditions, one becomes saddened by the ease with which human potentiality can be destroyed or repressed, so that a fully-human person can seem like a miracle, so improbable a happening as to be awe-inspiring. And simultaneously one is heartened by the fact that self-actualizing persons do in fact exist, that they are therefore possible, that the gauntlet of dangers can be run, that the finish line can be crossed. ~ Abraham Maslow

Professor A. H. Maslow, for example, has conducted a series of researches into extremely healthy people that have led him to conclude that health and optimism are far more positive principles in human psychology than Freud would ever have admitted.

Man is a slave to the delusion that he is a passive creature, a creature of circumstance; this is because he makes the mistake of identifying himself with his limited everyday consciousness, and is unaware of the immense forces that lie just beyond the threshold of consciousness. But these forces, although he is unaware of them on a conscious level, are still a far more active influence in his life than any external circumstances. Freudian psychology, for all its achievements, has made a twofold error: it has tried to anatomize the human mind as a pathologist would dissect a corpse, and it has limited its researches to sick human beings. Sick men talk about their illness far more than healthy people talk about their health; in fact, healthy people are usually too absorbed in living to bother with self-revelation. Psychology has consequently been inclined to divide the world into sick people and "normal" people, regarding occasional super-normality as the exception; Maslow has shown that super-normality is a great deal commoner than would be supposed; in fact as common as sub-normality. Ordinarily healthy people often experience a sense of intense life-affirmation (which Maslow calls "peak experiences"); and examination o ~ Colin Wilson

Abraham Maslow taught me, that when you're working with a patient, never let them spend more than a few moments on the problem, because what you think about is what expands, and if they're talking about the problem all the time, when they leave your session, the problem will expand. Get 'em to put their attention on what they intend to create, or on solutions. ~ Wayne Dyer

There are no perfect human beings! Persons can be found who are good, very good indeed, in fact, great. There do in fact exist creators, seers, sages, saints, shakers, and movers ... even if they are uncommon and do not come by the dozen. And yet these very same people can at times be boring, irritating, petulant, selfish, angry, or depressed. To avoid disillusionment with human nature, we must first give up our illusions about it. ~ Abraham Maslow

Innocence can be redefined and called stupidity. Honesty can be called gullibility. Candor becomes lack of common sense. Interest in your work can be called cowardice. Generosity can be called soft-headedness, and observe : the former is disturbing ~ Abraham Maslow

Fear of knowing is very deeply a fear of doing. ~ Abraham Maslow

To the extent that language forces experiences into categories it is a screen between reality and the human being. In a word, we pay for its benefits ... Therefore, while using language, as we must of necessity, we should be aware of its shortcomings. ~ Abraham Maslow

Quitting smoking can be a very good test of ones character. Pass the test and you will have accomplished so much more than just get rid of one bad habit ~ Abraham Maslow

A child wants some kind of undisrupted routine or rhythm. He seems to want a predictable, orderly world. ~ Abraham Maslow

Self-actualizing people must be what they can be. ~ Abraham Maslow

What does 'happy' mean? Happiness is not a state like Vermont. ~ Abraham Maslow

The way to recover the meaning of life and the worthwhileness of life is to recover the power of experience, to have impulse voices from within, and to be able to hear these impulse voices from within - and make the point: This can be done. ~ Abraham Maslow

Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be. ~ Abraham Maslow

He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail. ~ Abraham Maslow

A positive self image and healthy self esteem is based on approval, acceptance and recognition from others; but also upon actual accomplishments, achievements and success upon the realistic self confidence which ensues. ~ Abraham Maslow

Man has his future within him, dynamically alive at this present moment. ~ Abraham Maslow

My feeling is that the concept of creativeness and the concept of the healthy, self actualizing, fully human person seem to be coming closer and closer together, and may perhaps turn out to be the same thing ~ Abraham Maslow

A person who makes full use of and exploits his talents, potentialities, and capacities. Such a person seems to be fulfilling himself and doing the best he is capable of doing. The self-actualized person must find in his life those qualities that make his living rich and rewarding. He must find meaningfulness, self-sufficiency, effortlessness, playfulness, richness, simplicity, completion, necessity, perfection, individuality, beauty, and truth. ~ Abraham Maslow

I have learned the novice can often see things that the expert overlooks.
All that is necessary is not to be afraid of making mistakes, or of appearing naive. ~ Abraham Maslow

The good or healthy society would then be defined as one that permitted people's highest purposes to emerge by satisfying all their basic needs. ~ Abraham Maslow

I have discovered the missing link between the anthropoid apes and civilized men. It's us! ~ Abraham Maslow

I was awfully curious to find out why I didn't go insane. ~ Abraham Maslow

All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization. ~ Abraham Maslow

What is the good life? What is the good man? The good woman? What is the good society and what is my relation to it? What are my obligations to society? What is best for my children? What is justice? Truth? Virtue? What is my relation to nature, to death, to aging, to pain, to illness? How can I live a zestful, enjoyable, meaningful life? What is my responsibility to my brothers? Who are my brothers? What shall I be loyal to? What must I be ready to die for? ~ Abraham Maslow

I think of the self-actualizing man not as an ordinary man with something added, but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away. The average man is a full human being with dampened and inhibited powers and capabilities. ~ Abraham Maslow

[Concerning] the usual contempt with which an orthodox analytic group treats all outsiders and strangers ... I urge you to think of the young psychoanalysts as your colleagues, collaborators and partners and not as spies, traitors and wayward children. You can never develop a science that way, only an orthodox church. ~ Abraham Maslow

The search for safety takes its clearest form ... in the compulsive-obsessive neurosis ... to frantically order and stabilize the world so that no unmanageable, unexpected or unfamiliar dangers will ever appear. ~ Abraham Maslow

What we call 'normal' in psychology is really a psychopathology of the average, so undramatic and so widely spread that we don't even notice it ordinarily. ~ Abraham Maslow

We are dealing with a fundamental characteristic, inherent in human nature, a potentiality given to all or most human beings at birth, which most often is lost or buried or inhibited as the person gets enculturated. ~ Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow, the man who gave us Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, once said: "The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important. ~ Brad Hams

We fear our highest possibility. We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments. ~ Abraham Maslow

To make the growth choice instead of the fear choice a dozen times a day is to move a dozen times a day towards self-actualisation. ~ Abraham Maslow

You must want to be first-class ... meaning the best, the very best you are capable of becoming. If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities. ~ Abraham Maslow

Rioting is a childish way of trying to be a man, but it takes time to rise out of the hell of hatred and frustration and accept that to be a man you don't have to riot. ~ Abraham Maslow

We must remember that knowledge of one's own deep nature is also simultaneously knowledge of human nature in general. ~ Abraham Maslow

A pedestrian hit me and went under my car. ~ Abraham Maslow

We cannot study creativeness in an ultimate sense until we realize that practically all the definitions that we have been using of creativeness are essentially male or masculine definitions of male or masculine products. We've left out of consideration almost entirely the creativeness of women. ~ Abraham Maslow

Good psychology should include all the methodological techniques, without having loyalty to one method, one idea, or one person. ~ Abraham Maslow

But in the end you cannot serve two masters, Theos and Elohim, the god of the Greco-Roman philosophers and Caesars and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the violent god of profit proclaimed by the empire and the compassionate God of justice proclaimed by the prophets. You can try to hybridize them and compromise them for centuries, but like oil and water they eventually separate and prove incompatible. They refuse to alloy. They produce irreconcilable narratives and create different worlds. ~ Brian D. McLaren

There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races ... A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas ... ~ Abraham Lincoln

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you ... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it. ~ Abraham Lincoln

The life of Abraham Lincoln is by most accounts an amazing study in character formation. Yet he was notoriously disorganized; he even had a file in his law office labeled If you can't find it anywhere else, try looking here. ~ John Ortberg

God helps those who help others. ~ Amit Abraham

All who have lived according to God still live unto God, though they have departed this life. For this reason, God is called the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, since He is the God, not of the dead, but of the living ~ Gregory Of Nazianzus

Pass down the good that I do unto you when you are done with it ~ Amit Abraham

Politics means implementation of the best ideas for the society in the path of wellbeing and progress. This is the approach that gave the world, leaders of glorious characters such as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Subhas Chandra Bose (the actual man behind India's Independence), Vasil Levski (the man who liberated Bulgaria from the Ottoman oppression), Nelson Mandela and many more. These people were technically politicians too, but unlike the majority of the politicians of
modern society, their approach to politics was what it should be in a real system of politics. ~ Abhijit Naskar