Top 120 Abraham Maslow Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 2 of 3

51. “Man has his future within him, dynamically alive at this present moment.”

— Abraham Maslow

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

— Abraham Maslow

53. “People are not evil; they are schlemiels.”

— Abraham Maslow

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

— Abraham Maslow

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

— Abraham Maslow

56. “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.”

— Abraham Maslow

57. “We do what we are and we are what we do...”

— Abraham Maslow

58. “A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.”

— Abraham Maslow

59. “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.”

— Abraham Maslow

60. “A stupid man behaves stupidly, not because he wants to, or tries to, or is motivated to, but simply because he is what he is.”

— Abraham Maslow

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

— Abraham Maslow

62. “A positive self image and healthy self esteem is based on approval, acceptance and recognition from others; but also upon actual accomplishments, achievements and success upon the realistic self confidence which ensues.”

— Abraham Maslow

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

— Abraham Maslow

64. “Fear of knowing is very deeply a fear of doing.”

— Abraham Maslow

65. “The key question isn’t, ‘What fosters creativity?’ But it is, ‘Why isn’t everyone creative?’”

— Abraham Maslow

66. “Well why not a technology of joy, of happiness?”

— Abraham Maslow

67. “We must remember that knowledge of one’s own deep nature is also simultaneously knowledge of human nature in general.”

— Abraham Maslow

68. “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.”

— Abraham Maslow

69. “One cannot choose wisely for a life unless he dares to listen to himself, his own self, at each moment of his life.”

— Abraham Maslow

70. “Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred.”

— Abraham Maslow

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

— Abraham Maslow

72. “I have discovered the missing link between the anthropoid apes and civilized men. It’s us!”

— Abraham Maslow

73. “I used up all my sick days, so I’m calling in dead.”

— Abraham Maslow

74. “I was awfully curious to find out why I didn’t go insane.”

— Abraham Maslow

75. “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.”

— Abraham Maslow

76. “What shall we think of a well-adjusted slave?”

— Abraham Maslow

77. “We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already have capacities, talents, direction, missions, callings.”

— Abraham Maslow

78. “The chicken came first – God would look silly sitting on an egg.”

— Abraham Maslow

79. “In order for us to become truly happy, that which we can become, we must become.”

— Abraham Maslow

80. “No psychological health is possible unless this essential care of the person is fundamentally accepted, loved and respected by others and by himself.”

— Abraham Maslow

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

— Abraham Maslow

82. “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.”

— Abraham Maslow

83. “We may define therapy as a search for value.”

— Abraham Maslow

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

— Abraham Maslow

85. “Language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.”

— Abraham Maslow

86. “What does ‘happy’ mean? Happiness is not a state like Vermont.”

— Abraham Maslow

87. “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

88. “My feeling is that the concept of creativeness and the concept of the healthy, self actualizing, fully human person seem to be coming closer and closer together, and may perhaps turn out to be the same thing.”

— Abraham Maslow

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

— Abraham Maslow

90. “The job is, if we are willing to take it seriously, to help ourselves to be more perfectly what we are, to be more full, more actualizing, more realizing in fact, what we are in potentiality.”

— Abraham Maslow

91. “The study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy.”

— Abraham Maslow

92. “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.”

— Abraham Maslow

93. “Life could be vastly improved if we could count our blessings as self-actualizing people can and do, and if we could retain their constant sense of good fortune and gratitude for it.”

— Abraham Maslow

94. “Common sense means living in the world as it is today; but creative people are people who don’t want the world as it is today but want to make another world.”

— Abraham Maslow

95. “When we free ourselves from the constraints of ordinary goals and uninformed scoffers we will find ourselves roaring off the face of the earth.”

— Abraham Maslow

96. “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.”

— Abraham Maslow

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

— Abraham Maslow

98. “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.”

— Abraham Maslow

99. “The good or healthy society would then be defined as one that permitted people’s highest purposes to emerge by satisfying all their basic needs.”

— Abraham Maslow

100. “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.”

— Abraham Maslow