Abraham Maslow

Abraham MaslowAbraham Maslow (1908–1970) was an American psychologist who created Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization. [Українська] [Русский]

Abraham Maslow Quotes

Creativeness comes partly out of the unconscious, i.e., is a healthy regression, a temporary turning away from the real world.

— Abraham Maslow

When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.

— Abraham Maslow

If the essential core of the person is denied or suppressed, he gets sick sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes immediately, sometimes later.

— Abraham Maslow

One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.

— Abraham Maslow

Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of fear and need for defense) and risk (for the sake of progress and growth). Make the growth choice a dozen times a day.

— Abraham Maslow

Don’t worry when you are not recognized but strive to be worthy of recognition.

— Abraham Maslow

As always, dichotomizing pathologizes (and pathology dichotomizes).

— Abraham Maslow

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

— Abraham Maslow

In a word if you tell me you have a personality problem I am not certain until I know you better whether to say ‘Good!’ or ‘I’m sorry.’ It depends on the reasons. And these, it seems, may be good reasons, or they may be good reasons.

— Abraham Maslow

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

— Abraham Maslow

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.

— Abraham Maslow

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.

— Abraham Maslow

I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.

— Abraham Maslow

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

— Abraham Maslow

Most people experience both tragedy and joy in varying proportions. Any philosophy which leaves out either cannot be considered to be comprehensive.

— Abraham Maslow

What one can be, one must be!

— Abraham Maslow

One of the goals of education should be to teach that life is precious.

— Abraham Maslow

Every age but ours has had its model, its ideal. All of these have been given up by our culture; the saint, the hero, the gentleman, the knight, the mystic. About all we have left is the well-adjusted man without problems, a very pale and doubtful substitute.

— Abraham Maslow

Self-actualized people… live more in the real world of nature than in the man-made mass of concepts, abstractions, expectations, beliefs and stereotypes that most people confuse with the world.

— Abraham Maslow

Perhaps adjustment and stabilization, while good because it cuts your pain, is also bad because development towards a higher ideal ceases?

— Abraham Maslow

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.

— Abraham Maslow

We all have everything we need within us to create our fullest potential.

— Abraham Maslow

In a word, growth and improvement can come through pain and conflict.

— Abraham Maslow