About eighty to ninety per cent of the population must be rated about as high in ego-security as the most secure individuals in our society, who comprise perhaps five or ten per cent at most.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Ego
Getting used to our blessings is one of the most important nonevil generators of human evil, tragedy and suffering.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Appreciation, Attitude, Tragedy
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 give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Wishes
We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already have capacities, talents, direction, missions, callings.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Vision, Potential
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.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Love, People
Duty cannot be contrasted with pleasure nor work with play when duty is pleasure, when work is play, and people doing their duty are simultaneously seeking pleasure and being happy.
—Abraham Maslow
Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: The Universe, Possibilities, Potential
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.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Courage, Fear, Risk
One cannot choose wisely for a life unless he dares to listen to himself, his own self, at each moment of his life.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Life, Wise, Persona
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
Topics: People, Wisdom, Perfection
To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.
—Abraham Maslow
Life could be vastly improved if we could count our blessings as self-actualizing people can and do, and if we could retain their constant sense of good fortune and gratitude for it.
—Abraham Maslow
You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Growth, Courage, Safety
One’s only rival is one’s own potentialities. One’s 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.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Potential
Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.
—Abraham Maslow
The sacred is in the ordinary, in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s backyard.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Friend
A first rate soup is better than a second rate painting.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Appropriateness, Aptness, Success
When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.
—Abraham Maslow
Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What human beings can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature. This need we may call self-actualization.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Art, Purpose, Peace, Music, Vision
If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be unhappy for the rest of your life.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Unhappiness, Sadness, Ability
The dichotomy between selfishness and unselfishness disappears altogether in healthy people because in principle every act is both selfish and unselfish.
—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
Topics: Innocence
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
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Achievement
We fear our highest possibility (as well as our lowest one). We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Fear, Anxiety
Become aware of internal, subjective, sub-verbal 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.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Identity, Self-Knowledge
If the most socially identified people are themselves the most individualistic people, of what use is it to retain the polarity? If the most mature are also the most childlike? And if the most ethical and moral people are also the lustiest and most animal.
—Abraham Maslow
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he to be at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Identity, Abilities, Talents, Work
Self-actualizing people must be what they can be.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Act, People
What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Change, Awareness
Whereas the average individuals “often have not the slightest idea of what they are, of what they want, of what their own opinions are,” self-actualizing individuals have “superior awareness of their own impulses, desires, opinions, and subjective reactions in general.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Reflection
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Carl Rogers American Psychologist
- Howard Gardner American Psychologist
- Timothy Leary American Psychologist
- Erich Fromm German Social Philosopher
- Orval Hobart Mowrer American Psychologist
- B. F. Skinner American Psychologist
- George W. Crane American Psychologist
- Bruno Bettelheim Austrian-born Psychoanalyst
- Martin Seligman American Psychologist
- Carl Gustav Jung Swiss Psychologist
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