Humanistic Psychology Quotes - Abraham Maslow

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. – Humanistic Psychology Quotes Abraham Maslow

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

Appreciate again and again, freshly and naively the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy, however stable these experiences may have become to others.

Be independent of the good opinion of other people.

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.

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

Don’t worry when you are not recognized but strive to be worthy of recognition.

Every human being has both sets of forces within him. One set clings to safety and defensiveness out of fear, tending to regress backward, hanging on to the past, afraid to grow away from the primitive communication with the mother’s uterus and breast, afraid to take chances, afraid to jeopardize what he already has, afraid of independence, freedom, and separateness. The other set of forces impels him forward toward wholeness of Self and uniqueness of Self, toward full functioning of all his capacities, toward confidence in the face of the external world at the same time that he can accept his deepest, real, unconscious Self. – Humanistic Psychology Quotes Abraham Maslow

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

Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.

I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.

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.

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

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

If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I’d still swim. And I’d despise the one who gave up.

If the essential core of the person is denied or suppressed, he gets sick sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes immediately, sometimes later. – Humanistic Psychology Quotes Abraham Maslow

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

If you plan on being anything less than what you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.

In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety.

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.

It isn’t normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.

It looks as if there were a single ultimate goal for mankind, a far goal toward which all persons strive. This is called variously by different authors self-actualization, self-realization, integration, psychological health, individuation, autonomy, creativity, productivity, but they all agree that this amounts to realizing the potentialities of the person, that is to say, becoming fully human, everything that person can be. – Humanistic Psychology Quotes Abraham Maslow

It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually.

Let people realize clearly that every time they threaten someone or humiliate or unnecessarily hurt or dominate or reject another human being, they become forces for the creation of psychopathology, even if these be small forces. Let them recognize that every person who is kind, helpful, decent, psychologically democratic, affectionate, and warm, is a psychotherapeutic force, even though a small one.

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.

Not allowing people to go through their pain, and protecting them from it, may turn out to be a kind of over-protection, which in turn implies a certain lack of respect for the integrity and the intrinsic nature and the future development of the individual.

One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.

One of the goals of education should be to teach that life is precious. – Humanistic Psychology Quotes Abraham Maslow

One’s only rival is one’s own potentialities. One’s an 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.

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

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

Seeing is better than being blind, even when seeing hurts.

Self-actualized people…live more in the real world of nature than in the man-made mass of concepts, abstractions, expectations, beliefs, and stereotypes that most people confuse with the world.

The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.

The best way to view a present problem is to give it all you’ve got, to study it and its nature, to perceive within it the intrinsic interrelationships, to discover the answer to the problem within the problem itself.

The definition of the good society is one in which virtue pays.

The fact is that people are good if only their fundamental wishes are satisfied, their wish for affection and security. Give people affection and security, and they will be secure in their feelings and their behavior.

The great lesson from the true mystics is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, and in one’s backyard. – Humanistic Psychology Quotes 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.

The key question isn’t “What fosters creativity?” But why in God’s name isn’t everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might not be why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate?

We have got to abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity as if it were a miracle that anybody created anything. The key question isn’t, what fosters creativity? But it is, why isn’t everyone creative?

The most beautiful fate, the most wonderful good fortune that can happen to any human being, is to be paid for doing that which he passionately loves to do.

The most fortunate are those who have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy.

The most stable, and therefore, the most healthy self-esteem is based on deserved respect from others rather than on external fame or celebrity and unwarranted adulation.

The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important.

The sacred is in the ordinary…it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s own backyard…travel may be a flight from confronting the scared–this lesson can be easily lost. To be looking elsewhere for miracles is to be a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous.

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.

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.

The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short. – Humanistic Psychology Quotes Abraham Maslow

To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.

We fear our highest possibilities. We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments, under conditions of great courage. We enjoy and even thrill to godlike possibilities we see in ourselves in such peak moments. And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these very same possibilities.

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

We need not take refuge in supernatural gods to explain our saints and sages and heroes and statesmen as if to explain our disbelief that mere unaided human beings could be that good or wise.

What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization. – Humanistic Psychology Quotes Abraham Maslow

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

What one can be, one must be!