M. Scott Peck Quotes

With total discipline we can solve all problems.

Doubt is often the beginning of wisdom.

Love always requires courage and involves risk.

We know a great deal more about the causes of physical disease than we do about the causes of physical health.

How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded.

I believe it would be considerably healthier for us to dare to live without a reason for many things than with reasons that are simplistic.

There is no worse bitterness than to reach the end of your life and realized you have not lived.

If you wish to discern either the presence or absence of integrity, you need to ask only one question. What is missing? Has anything been left out?

There is no act of love that is not an act of work or courage. No exceptions.

If we deny our anger, our pain, our ambition, or our goodness, we will suffer.

Falling in love is not an extension of one's limits or boundaries; it is a partial and temporary collapse of them.

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.

Not only do self-love and love of others go hand in hand but ultimately they are indistinguishable.

Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems ... create our courage and wisdom.

To heal your body, you must first heal your spirit.

Sickness begets chaos, which, through hard work and a touch of grace, leads to growth and resurrection.

From the age of three on, as far back as I remember, I just knew there was a God behind everything.

Examination of the world without is never as personally painful as examination of the world within.

The feeling of being valuable - 'I am a valuable person'- is essential to mental health and is a cornerstone of self-discipline.

I've had all kinds of experiences with God in terms of revelation through a still, small voice or dreams or coincidences.

Ultimately love is everything.

If we want to be heard we must speak in a language the listener can understand and on a level at which the listener is capable of operating.

What people get admired and appreciated for in community are their soft skills: their sense of humor and timing, their ability to listen, their courage and honesty, their capacity for empathy.

I guess if you want to know one single thing I'm about, it's that I'm against easy answers.

America's greatest sin is the refusal to delay gratification.

All human interactions are opportunities either to learn or to teach.

The only real security in life lies in relishing life's insecurity.

Love is too large, too deep ever to be truly understood or measured or limited within the framework of words.

A life of total dedication to the truth also means a life of willingness to be personally challenged.

We cannot solve life's problems except by solving them.

In and through community lies the salvation of the world.

The more effort we make to appreciate and perceive reality, the larger and more accurate our maps will be. But many do not want to make this effort.

When we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems, we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us.

The path to holiness lies through questioning everything.

Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional.

The denial of suffering is, in fact a better definition of illness than its acceptance.

Jesus was lonely and sorrowful and scared-an unbelievably real person.

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.

The act of loving is an act of self-evolution even when the purpose of the act is someone else's growth.

I have a very full and busy life and occasionally I am asked, Scotty, how can you do all that you do? The most telling reply I can give is: Because I spend at least two hours a day doing nothing.

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.

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.

If your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution.

Listening well is an exercise of attention and by necessity hard work. It is because they do not realize this or because they are not willing to do the work that most people do not listen well.

It is not easy for us to change. But it is possible and it is our glory as human beings

I can remember years ago sitting on my bed and suddenly thinking, "I am God."

Teach us to number our days aright.

There is no virtue inherent in un-constructive suffering.

Consciousness is the foundation of all thinking; and thinking is the foundation of all consciousness.

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.