Abraham Maslow Quotes

Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred.

Only the flexibly creative person can really manage the future, Only the one who can face novelty with confidence and without fear.

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.

Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? ...a good question might be not why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate?

He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail.

People are not evil; they are schlemiels.

What does 'happy' mean? Happiness is not a state like Vermont.

Boys will be boys as long as there are no girls in the picture.

Fear of knowing is very deeply a fear of doing.

What we call 'normal' in psychology is really a psychopathology of the average, so undramatic and so widely spread that we don't even notice it ordinarily.

Be independent of the good opinion of other people.

We may define therapy as a search for value.

The chicken came first - God would look silly sitting on an egg.

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.

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.

Human beings seem to be far more autonomous and self-governed than modern psychological theory allows for.

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.

We have got to abandon the sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle if anybody created anything.

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.

Religion becomes a state of mind achievable in almost any activity of life, if this activity is raised to a suitable level of perfection.

What kind of guilt comes from being true to yourself but not to others?. As we have seen, being true to yourself may at times intrinsically and necessarily be in conflict with being true to others.

Secrecy, censorship, dishonesty, and blocking of communication threaten all the basic needs.

The key question isn't, 'What fosters creativity?' But it is, 'Why isn't everyone creative?'

The major motivation theories by which most men live can lead them only to depression and cynicism.

An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my vehicle and vanished.

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

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.

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.

Love, safety, belongingness and respect from other people are almost panaceas for the situational disturbances and even for some of the mild character disturbances.

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.

Well why not a technology of joy, of happiness?

...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.

Become aware of internal, subjective, sub-verbal experiences, so that these experiences can be brought into the world of abstraction.

If you treat your children at home in the same way you treat your animals in the lab, your wife will scratch your eyes out. My wife ferociously warned me against experimenting on her babies.

To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.

Getting used to our blessings is one of the most important non-evil generators of human evil, tragedy and suffering.

The loss of illusions and the discovery of identity, though painful at first, can be ultimately exhilarating and strengthening.

Man is a perpetually wanting animal.

What shall we think of a well-adjusted slave?

It is vital that people "count their blessings:" to appreciate what they possess without having to undergo its actual loss.

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 habit

Self-actualizing people must be what they can be.

A child wants some kind of undisrupted routine or rhythm. He seems to want a predictable, orderly world.

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.

Apparently one impression we are making... is that creativeness consists of lightning striking you on the head in one great glorious moment.

The fact that people who create are good workers tends to be lost.

Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.

The test of a man is: does he bear apples? Does he bear fruit?

It is unfortunate to consider all lawyers as natural Satanists many are just dumb.

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.