Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Carl Rogers (American Psychologist)

Carl Ransom Rogers (1902–87) was an American psychotherapist. The originator of humanistic psychology, he initiated person-centered, non-directive counseling.

Born in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, Rogers earned a doctorate in psychology at Columbia University’s Teachers College (1931,) then worked as director of the child guidance center in Rochester, New York, and taught at Chicago University 1945–57.

Rogers’s body of research at the University of Chicago, detailed in his well-known books, Client-Centered Therapy (1951) and Psychotherapy and Personality Change (1954,) attempts to stimulate and resolve a person’s problems by verbal means. This method is in contrast to talking the client into believing any doctrinaire explanation of his/her symptoms.

Rogers’s approaches gave precedence to the individuality of a client’s perceptions of the world and limited the role of the psychologist in supporting and clarifying that perspective. His therapy technique became the norm of empirical psychotherapy and led to the proliferation of open therapy sessions and encounter groups in which clients talk about their problems under the direction of a passive therapist.

Rogers was also a pioneer in the systematic investigation of the efficacy of psychotherapy. He was Fellow at the Western Behavioral Science Institute 1964–68 and the Center for Studies of the Person at La Jolla, California, 1968–87. His other best-known books include On Becoming a Person (1961) and Personal Power (1977.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Carl Rogers

The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.
Carl Rogers
Topics: Life and Living

The more I am willing to be myself in all this complexity of life and the more I am willing to understand and accept the realities in myself and in the other person, the more change seems to have been stirred up. It is a very paradoxical thing – that to the degree that each one of us is willing to be himself, then he finds not only himself changing; but he finds that other people to whom he relates are also changing.
Carl Rogers

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
Carl Rogers
Topics: Change

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.
Carl Rogers
Topics: Independence

The facts are always friendly, every bit of evidence one can acquire, in any area, leads one that much closer to what is true.
Carl Rogers
Topics: Facts

Man’s inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively.
Carl Rogers
Topics: Listening

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 litle 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.
Carl Rogers

People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner.” I don’t try to control a sunset, I just watch with awe as it unfolds.
Carl Rogers

The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn … and change.
Carl Rogers

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

When the other person is hurting, confused, troubled, anxious, alienated, terrified, or when he or she is doubtful of self-worth, uncertain as to identity, then understanding is called for. The gentle and sensitive companionship of an empathic stance provides illumination and healing. In such situations deep understanding is, I believe, the most precious gift one can give to another.
Carl Rogers

In a person who is open to experience each stimulus is freely relayed through the nervous system, without being distorted by any process of defensiveness.
Carl Rogers
Topics: Experience

The only kind of learning which significantly influences behavior is self-discovered or self-appropriated learning – truth that has been assimilated in experience.
Carl Rogers
Topics: Learning

When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard. I have deeply appreciated the times that I have experienced this sensitive, empathic, concentrated listening.
Carl Rogers
Topics: Listening

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.
Carl Rogers
Topics: Teaching

A person’s real need, a most terrible need, is for someone to listen…not as a ‘patient’ but as a human soul. To listen well is to respond to a great human yearning.
Carl Rogers

I hear the words, the thoughts, the feeling tones, the personal meaning, even the meaning that is below the conscious intent of the speaker. Sometimes too, in a message which superficially is not very important, I hear a deep human cry that lies buried and unknown far below the surface of the person. So I have learned to ask myself, can I hear the sounds and sense the shape of this other person’s inner world? Can I resonate to what he is saying so deeply that I sense the meanings he is afraid of, yet would like to communicate, as well as those he knows?
Carl Rogers
Topics: Communication, Pride

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