Quotes from Abraham Maslow

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 disturbing

A child wants some kind of undisrupted routine or rhythm. He seems to want a predictable, orderly world. For instance, injustice, unfairness or inconsistency in the parents seems to make a child feel anxious and unsafe. This attitude may not be so mu.

The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.

You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

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 prestige

The fact is that people are good, if only their fundamental wishes are satisfied, their wish for affection and security. Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.

Even if all these needs are satisfied, we may still often, if not always, expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what he is fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet.

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

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.

About eighty to ninety per cent of the population must be rated about as high in ego-security as the most secure individuals in our society, who comprise perhaps five or ten per cent at most.

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

The growing tip is a small proportion of mankind. They will carry on. As a matter of fact, that is what is happening with the whole humanistic synthesis now; the groundbreaking is done by a few people, and most of the stuff is just routine or mediocr

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

The fact is that people are good, Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.

The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.

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

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I'd still swim. And I'd despise the one who gave up.

One's only rival is one's own potentialities. One's only failure is failing to live up to one's own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king.

All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be.