Words of wisdom and quotes from...

Abraham Maslow

Abraham Harold Maslow (April 1, 1908 - June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization. Maslow was a psychology professor at Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research and Columbia University. He stressed the importance of focusing on the positive qualities in people, as opposed to treating them as a "bag of symptoms." He is also known for Maslow's hammer, popularly phrased as "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" from his book The Psychology of Science, published in 1966.

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

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

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

"What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization."

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

"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 behaviour."

"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."

"But behaviour 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."

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

"Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self actualization and the love for the highest values."

"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."

"I was awfully curious to find out why I didn't go insane."

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

"We may define therapy as a search for value."

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

"A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting."