Abraham Maslow Quotes

What this means is that, e. g., a basically satisfied person no longer has the needs for esteem, love, safety, etc. The only sense in which he might be said to have them is in the almost metaphysical sense that a sated man has hunger, or a filled bottle has emptiness

The confrontation with death — and the reprieve from it — makes everything look so precious, so sacred, so beautiful that I feel more strongly than ever the impulse to love it, to embrace it, and to let myself be overwhelmed by it. . . . I wonder if we could love passionately, if ecstasy would be possible at all, if we knew we'd never die.

The net results ultimately are either one or the other — either we respect and accept ourselves or we despise ourselves and feel contemptible, worthless, and unlovable.

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.

Knowledge and action are very closely bound together, all agree. I go much further, and am convinced that knowledge and action are frequently synonymous, even identical in the Socratic fashion. Where we know fully and completely, suitable action follows automatically and reflexly. Choices are then made without conflict and with full spontaneity.

Het is niet normaal om te weten wat we willen. Dat is een enorme en uitzonderlijke psychologische prestatie.

What one can be, one must be!

"إن كان كل ما تملكه
هو مطرقة، فكل ما ستراه
سيبدو مثل المسامير".

"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."

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.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, an poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This weed we call self-actualization….It refers to man’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely to the tendency for him to become actually in what he is potentially: to become everything one is capable of becoming.

Let people realize clearly that every time they threaten someone or humiliate or unnecessarily hurt or dominate or reject another human being, they become forces for the creation of psychopathology, even if these be small forces. Let them recognize that every person who is kind, helpful, decent, psychologically democratic, affectionate, and warm, is a psychotheraputic force, even though a small one.

Если ваш единственный инструмент - молоток, то каждая проблема становится похожей на гвоздь.

You must want to be first-class… meaning the best, the very best you are capable of becoming. If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities.

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.