M. Scott Peck
The act of loving is an act of self-evolution even when the purpose of the act is someone else's growth.Collection: Self
Love is too large, too deep ever to be truly understood or measured or limited within the framework of words.Collection: Love Is
I am dubious as to how far we can move toward global community-which is the only way to achieve international peace-until we learn the basic principles of community in our own individual lives and personal spheres of influence.Collection: Moving
Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional. The person who truely loves does so because of a decision to love. This person has made a commitment to be loving whether or not the loving feeling is present. ...Conversely, it is not only possible but necessary for a loving person to avoid acting on feelings of love.Collection: Commitment
But for the first time, I had a religious identity. I had come home. And so I called myself a Zen Buddhist at the age of 18.Collection: Religious
Consciousness is the foundation of all thinking; and thinking is the foundation of all consciousness.Collection: Thinking
Although I was raised in a profoundly secular home, I had a belief, an awareness of God, from as far back as I can remember.Collection: God
To be free people we must assume total responsibility for ourselves, but in doing so must possess the capacity to reject responsibility that is not truly ours. To be organized and efficient, to live wisely, we must daily delay gratification and keep an eye on the future; yet to live joyously we must also possess the capacity, when it is not destructive, to live in the present and act spontaneously. In other words, discipline itself must be disciplined. The type of discipline required to discipline discipline is what I call balancing.Collection: Eye
An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one's own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker's world from the inside, step in inside his or her shoes.Collection: Giving Up
If we know exactly where we're going, exactly how to get there, and exactly what we'll see along the way, we won't learn anything.Collection: Way
But I already saw no great difference between the psyche and spirituality. To amass knowledge without becoming wise is not my idea of progress in therapy.Collection: Wise
Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others.Collection: Life
The denial of suffering is, in fact a better definition of illness than its acceptance.Collection: Acceptance
Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems ... create our courage and wisdom.Collection: Adversity
Sickness begets chaos, which, through hard work and a touch of grace, leads to growth and resurrection.Collection: Hard Work
Not only do self-love and love of others go hand in hand but ultimately they are indistinguishable.Collection: Self
If we deny our anger, our pain, our ambition, or our goodness, we will suffer.Collection: Pain
Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know how to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost.Collection: Reality
Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional.Collection: Love Is
I make no distinction between the mind and the spirit, and therefore no distinction between the process of achieving spiritual growth and achieving mental growth. They are one and the same.Collection: Spiritual
Good discipline requires time. When we have no time to give our children, or no time that we are willing to give, we don't even observe them closely enough to become aware of when their need for our disciplinary assistance is expressed subtley.Collection: Children
It is not easy for us to change. But it is possible and it is our glory as human beingsCollection: Healing
Let me simply state that it is wrong to regard any other human being, a priori, as an object, or an 'It.' This is so because each and every human being - you, every friend, every stranger, every foreigner - is precious.Collection: Stranger
I can remember years ago sitting on my bed and suddenly thinking, "I am God."Collection: God
The feeling of being valuable - 'I am a valuable person'- is essential to mental health and is a cornerstone of self-discipline.Collection: Self
Community is another such phenomenon. Like electricity, it is profoundly lawful. Yet there remains something about it that is inherently mysterious, miraculous, unfathomable. Thus there is no adequate one-sentence definition of genuine community. Community is something more than the sum of its parts, its individual members. What is this "something more?" Even to begin to answer that, we enter a realm that is not so much abstract as almost mystical. It is a realm where words are never fully suitable and language itself falls short.Collection: Fall
There is no virtue inherent in un-constructive suffering.Collection: Suffering
When we teach ourselves and our children discipline, we are teaching them and ourselves how to suffer and also how to grow.Collection: Children
The only real security in life lies in relishing life's insecurity.Collection: Real
I have said I have met Satan, and this is true. But it is not tangible. It no more has horns, hooves and a forked tail than God has a long white beard. Even the name, Satan, is just a name we have given to something basically nameless.Collection: Fear
Do what you feel called to do, but also be prepared to accept that you don't necessarily know what you're going to learn. Be willing to be surprised by forces beyond your control, and realize that a major learning on the journey is the art of surrender.Collection: Art
God creates each soul differently, so that when all the mud is finally cleared away, His light will shine through it in a beautiful, colorful, totally new pattern.Collection: Beautiful
We cannot even let the other person into our hearts or minds unless we empty ourselves. We can truly listen to him or truly hear her only out of emptiness.Collection: Heart
When we cling, often forever, to our old patterns of thinking and behaving, we fall to negotiate any crisis, to truly grow up, and to experience the joyful sense of rebirth that accompanies the successful transition into greater maturity.Collection: Growing Up
An unconscious, gentle process whereby people who want to be loving attempt to be so by telling little white lies, by withholding some of the truth about themselves and their feelings in order to avoid conflict. Pseudocommunity is conflict-avoiding; true community is conflict-resolving.Collection: Lying
Community is and must be inclusive. The great enemy of community is exclusivity. Groups that exclude others because they are poor or doubters or divorced or sinners or of some different race or nationality are not communities; they are cliques--actually defensive bastions against community.Collection: Race
True love is not a feeling by which we are overwhelmed. It is a committed, thoughtful decision.Collection: Thoughtful
The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own human nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world.Collection: Ignorance
The best decision-makers are those who are willing to suffer the most over their decisions but still retain their ability to be decisive.Collection: Decision
Children will, in my dream, be taught that laziness and narcissism are at the very root of human evil, and why this is so. . . . They will come to know that the natural tendency of the individual in a group is to forfeit his or her ethical judgment to the leader, and that this tendency should be resisted. And they will finally see it as each individual's responsibility to continually examine himself or herself for laziness and narcissism and then to purify themselves accordingly.Collection: Dream
The key to community is the acceptance, in fact the celebration of our individual and cultural differences. It is also the key to world peaceCollection: Acceptance
Listen to your child enough and you will come to realize that he or she is quite an extraordinary individual. And the more extraordinary you realize your child to be the more you will be willing to listen. And the more you will learn.Collection: Children
God wants us to become himself or herself or itself. We are growing toward Godhood. God is the goal of evolution.Collection: God
When we love something it is of value to us, and when something is of value to us we spend time with it, time enjoying it and time taking care of it.Collection: Love You
Abandon the urge to simplify everything, to look for formulas and easy answers, and to begin to think multidimensionally, to glory in the mystery and paradoxes of life, not to be dismayed by the multitude of causes and consequences that are inherent in each experience -- to appreciate the fact that life is complex.Collection: Life
The giving up of personality traits, well-established patterns of behavior, ideologies, and even whole life styles...these are major forms of giving up that are required if one is to travel very far on the journey of life.Collection: Life
A life of total dedication to the truth also means a life of willingness to be personally challenged.Collection: Mean
Going into the unknown is invariably frightening, but we learn what is significantly new only through adventures.Collection: Adventure
A discussion becomes destructive when it begins to generate more heat than light.Collection: Light