The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn … and change.
—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
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
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
The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.
—Carl Rogers
Topics: Creativity
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
Man’s inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively.
—Carl Rogers
Topics: Listening
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
—Carl Rogers
Topics: Change
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: Pride, Communication
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Abraham Maslow American Psychologist
B. F. Skinner American Psychologist
Howard Gardner American Psychologist
Timothy Leary American Psychologist
Bruno Bettelheim Austrian-born American Psychologist
Erich Fromm German Social Philosopher
Martin Seligman American Psychologist
George W. Crane American Psychologist
Orval Hobart Mowrer American Psychologist
Carl Gustav Jung Swiss Psychologist