Welcome to our collection of quotes (with shareable picture quotes) by Abraham Maslow. We hope you enjoy pondering them and that you will share them widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Abraham Maslow
Abraham Harold Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization. Maslow was a psychology professor at Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research, and Columbia University. He stressed the importance of focusing on the positive qualities in people, as opposed to treating them as a "bag of symptoms". A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Maslow as the tenth most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
If he is to be ultimately at peace with himself, what a man can be, he must be.
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.
At any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.
Human beings seem to be far more autonomous and self-governed than modern psychological theory allows for.
An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my vehicle and vanished.
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.
False optimism sooner or later means disillusionment , anger and hopelessness.
A child wants some kind of undisrupted routine or rhythm. He seems to want a predictable, orderly world.
Secrecy, censorship, dishonesty, and blocking of communication threaten all the basic needs.
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.
Apparently one impression we are making... is that creativeness consists of lightning striking you on the head in one great glorious moment.
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.
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.
The fact that people who create are good workers tends to be lost.
One cannot choose wisely for a life unless he dares to listen to himself, his own self, at each moment of his life.
The study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy.
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.
There is, first, the desire for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for confidence in the face of the world, and for independence and freedom. Secondly, we have what we may call the desire for reputation or prestige.
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.
One of the goals of education should be to teach that life is precious.
Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred.
What shall we think of a well-adjusted slave?
One's only failure is failing to live up to one's own possibilities.
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.
Expression and communication in the peak -- experiences tend often to become poetic, mythical, and rhapsodic, as if this were the natural kind of language to express such states of being.
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.
No psychological health is possible unless this essential care of the person is fundamentally accepted, loved and respected by others and by himself.
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.
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.
Language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.
What is life for? Life is for you.
The desire to know and to understand are themselves conative, i.e., have a striving character, and are as much personality needs as the basic needs we have already discussed.
Self-actualizing people have a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general. They feel kinship and connection, as if all people were members of a single family.
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.
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.
Education can become a self-fulfilling activity, liberating in and of itself.
A stupid man behaves stupidly, not because he wants to, or tries to, or is motivated to, but simply because he is what he is.
Some have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy.
When we free ourselves from the constraints of ordinary goals and uninformed scoffers we will find ourselves roaring off the face of the earth.
In a word, to perceive an object abstractly means not to perceive some aspects of it. It clearly implies selection of some attributes, rejection of other attributes, creation or distortion of still others. We make of it what we wish. We create it.
Love, safety, belongingness and respect from other people are almost panaceas for the situational disturbances and even for some of the mild character disturbances.
Getting used to our blessings is one of the most important non-evil generators of human evil, tragedy and suffering.
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.
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.
Become aware of internal, subjective, sub-verbal experiences, so that these experiences can be brought into the world of abstraction.
Longer Version:
Become aware of internal, subjective, subverbal experiences, so that these experiences can be brought into the world of abstraction, of conversation, of naming, etc. with the consequence that it immediately becomes possible for a certain amount of control to be exerted over these hitherto unconscious and uncontrollable processes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The key question isn't, 'What fosters creativity?' But it is, 'Why isn't everyone creative?'
Longer Version:
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.
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.
I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.
When people appear to be something other than good and decent, it is only because they are reacting to stress, pain, or the deprivation of basic human needs such as security, love, and self-esteem.
I was awfully curious to find out why I didn't go insane.
We may define therapy as a search for value.
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.
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.
Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.
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.
We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.
If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
Longer Version:
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, an poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This weed we call self-actualization….It refers to man’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely to the tendency for him to become actually in what he is potentially: to become everything one is capable of becoming.
The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.
What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.
What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.