Abraham Maslow
Human nature has been sold short...[humans have] a higher nature which...includes the need for meaningful work, for responsibility, for creativeness, for being fair and just, for doing what is worthwhile and for preferring to do it well.Collection: Meaningful
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."Collection: Motivation
We fear our highest possibilities. We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments, under conditions of great courage. We enjoy and even thrill to godlike possibilities we see in ourselves in such peak moments. And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these very same possibilities.Collection: Perfect
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.Collection: Gratitude
What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualizat ion.Collection: Men
The human being is so constructed that he pressed toward fuller and fuller being.Collection: Humans
To make the growth choice instead of the fear choice a dozen times a day is to move a dozen times a day towards self-actualisation.Collection: Moving
It looks as if there were a single ultimate goal for mankind, a far goal toward which all persons strive. This is called variously by different authors self-actualization, self-realization, integration, psychological health, individuation, autonomy, creativity, productivity, but they all agree that this amounts to realizing the potentialities of the person, that is to say, becoming fully human, everything that person can be.Collection: Creativity
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 disturbingCollection: Honesty
In the ideal college, intrinsic education would be available to anyone who wanted it...The college would be life-long, for learning can take place all through life.Collection: Education
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.Collection: Self Esteem
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.Collection: Philosophy
If you love the truth, you'll trust it - that is, you will expect it to be good, beautiful, perfect, orderly, etc., in the long run, not necessarily in the short run.Collection: Beautiful
The study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophyCollection: Philosophy
What does 'happy' mean? Happiness is not a state like Vermont.Collection: Happiness
There seems no intrinsic reason why everyone shouldn't be (self-actualising). Apparently every baby has possibilities for self-actualisation, but most get it knocked out of them ...I think of the self-actualising man not as an ordinary man with something added, but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away.Collection: Baby
To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.Collection: Life
False optimism sooner or later means disillusionment , anger and hopelessness.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Hands
What shall we think of a well-adjusted slave?Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Inspirational
The person in peak-experiences feels himself, more than other times, to be the responsible, active, creating center of his activities and of his perceptions. He feels more like a prime-mover, more self-determined (rather than caused, determined, helpless, dependent, passive, weak, bossed). He feels himself to be his own boss, fully responsible, fully volitional, with more "free-will" than at other times, master of his fate, an agent.Collection: Fate
We cannot study creativeness in an ultimate sense until we realize that practically all the definitions that we have been using of creativeness are essentially male or masculine definitions of male or masculine products. We've left out of consideration almost entirely the creativeness of women.Collection: Males
The emotional reaction in the peak experience has a special flavor of wonder, of awe, of reverence, of humility and surrender before the experience as before something great.Collection: Humility
Well why not a technology of joy, of happiness?Collection: Technology
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.Collection: Communication
Plateau experiencing can be achieved, learned, earned by long hard work.... A transient glimpse is certainly possible in the peak experiences which may, after all, come sometimes to anyone. But, so to speak, to take up residence on the high plateau .... that is another matter altogether. That tends to be a lifelong effort.Collection: Hard Work
Human beings seem to be far more autonomous and self-governed than modern psychological theory allows for.Collection: Self
When all you own is a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail.Collection: Nails
...the great lesson is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's backyard.Collection: Inspirational
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 prestigeCollection: Achievement
A child wants some kind of undisrupted routine or rhythm. He seems to want a predictable, orderly world.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Wise
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 thingCollection: Creativity
Getting used to our blessings is one of the most important non-evil generators of human evil, tragedy and suffering.Collection: Appreciation
The test of a man is: does he bear apples? Does he bear fruit?Collection: Men
I have discovered the missing link between the anthropoid apes and civilized men. It's us!Collection: Men
An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my vehicle and vanished.Collection: God
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.Collection: Often Is
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 habitCollection: Encouragement
The job is, if we are willing to take it seriously, to help ourselves to be more perfectly what we are, to be more full, more actualizing, more realizing in fact, what we are in potentiality.Collection: Jobs
To the extent that language forces experiences into categories it is a screen between reality and the human being. In a word, we pay for its benefits... Therefore, while using language, as we must of necessity, we should be aware of its shortcomings.Collection: Reality
Self-actualizing people must be what they can be.Collection: Inspirational
Become aware of internal, subjective, sub-verbal experiences, so that these experiences can be brought into the world of abstraction.Collection: Experience
Religion becomes a state of mind achievable in almost any activity of life, if this activity is raised to a suitable level of perfection.Collection: Perfection
The theory of science which permits and encourages the exclusion of so much that is true and real and existent cannot be considered a comprehensive science.Collection: Real
Since my mother is the type that's called schizophrenogenic in the literature-she's the one who makes crazy people, crazy children-I was awfully curious to find out why I didn't go insane.Collection: Mother