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
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
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
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: People, Love
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, Talents, Work, Abilities
Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.
—Abraham Maslow
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
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
What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Change, Awareness
Self-actualizing people must be what they can be.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Act, People
A first rate soup is better than a second rate painting.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Appropriateness, Aptness, Success
To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.
—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
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: Perfection, People, Wisdom
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: Wise, Life, Persona
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: Music, Art, Peace, Vision, Purpose
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Problem-solving, Perception, Perspective, Attitude
You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Safety, Growth, Courage
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, Potential, Possibilities
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: Anxiety, Fear
Getting used to our blessings is one of the most important nonevil generators of human evil, tragedy and suffering.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: Attitude, Tragedy, Appreciation
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
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
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: Fear, Risk, Courage
When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.
—Abraham Maslow
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
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: Potential, Vision
The dichotomy between selfishness and unselfishness disappears altogether in healthy people because in principle every act is both selfish and unselfish.
—Abraham Maslow
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
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.
—Abraham Maslow
Topics: People, The Mind, Knowledge, Kindness, Ability, Live-now, Past and Present, Mind, Compassion, Life, Success
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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