Top 250 M. Scott Peck Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “If your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution.”

— M. Scott Peck

52. “Integrity is never painless.”

— M. Scott Peck

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

— M. Scott Peck

54. “Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one’s evil from oneself as well as from others than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture.”

— M. Scott Peck

55. “The difficulty we have in accepting responsibility for our behavior lies in the desire to avoid the pain of the consequences of that behavior.”

— M. Scott Peck

56. “The great awareness comes slowly, piece by piece. The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. The experience of spiritual power is basically a joyful one.”

— M. Scott Peck

57. “The will to grow is, in essence, the same phenomenon as love. Genuinely loving people are, by definition, growing people.”

— M. Scott Peck

58. “Self-discipline is a self-enlarging process.”

— M. Scott Peck

59. “The key to community is the acceptance, in fact the celebration of our individual and cultural differences. It is also the key to world peace.”

— M. Scott Peck

60. “There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community.”

— M. Scott Peck

61. “The only real security in life lies in relishing life’s insecurity.”

— M. Scott Peck

62. “Often the most loving thing we can do when a friend is in pain is to share the pain-to be there even when we have nothing to offer except our presence and even when being there is painful to ourselves.”

— M. Scott Peck

63. “To the child, abandonment by its parents is the equivalent of death.”

— M. Scott Peck

64. “Discipline, it has been suggested, is the means of human spiritual evolution. What provides the motive, the energy for discipline? This force I believe to be love. I define love thus: The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”

— M. Scott Peck

65. “Falling in love is not an act of will. It is not a conscious choice. No matter how open to or eager for it we may be, the experience may still elude us. Contrarily, the experience may capture us at times when we are definitely not seeking it, when it is inconvenient and undesirable.”

— M. Scott Peck

66. “Evil people hate the light because it reveals themselves to themselves. They hate goodness because it reveals their badness; they hate love because it reveals their laziness. They will destroy the light, the goodness, the love in order to avoid the pain of such self-awareness.”

— M. Scott Peck

67. “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.”

— M. Scott Peck

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

— M. Scott Peck

69. “The path to holiness lies through questioning everything.”

— M. Scott Peck

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

— M. Scott Peck

71. “It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually.”

— M. Scott Peck

72. “Mental Health is dedication to reality at all costs.”

— M. Scott Peck

73. “With total discipline we can solve all problems.”

— M. Scott Peck

74. “Those things that hurt, instruct.”

— M. Scott Peck

75. “We skim over the surface thoughtlessly. But we must acknowledge that thinking well is a time-consuming process. We can’t expect instant results. We have to slow down a bit, and take the time to contemplate, meditate, and even pray. It is the only route to a more meaningful and efficient existence.”

— M. Scott Peck

76. “In and through community lies the salvation of the world.”

— M. Scott Peck

77. “Many addictions can be far more dangerous than addiction to drugs. The addiction to power...”

— M. Scott Peck

78. “We cannot be a source for strength unless we nurture our own strength.”

— M. Scott Peck

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

— M. Scott Peck

80. “Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually.”

— M. Scott Peck

81. “The neurotic assumes too much responsibility; the person with a character disorder not enough.”

— M. Scott Peck

82. “The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own human nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world.”

— M. Scott Peck

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

— M. Scott Peck

84. “Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems.”

— M. Scott Peck

85. “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.”

— M. Scott Peck

86. “We cannot solve life’s problems except by solving them.”

— M. Scott Peck

87. “Everything that happens in life is there to aid our spiritual growth.”

— M. Scott Peck

88. “True listening involves bracketing, a setting aside of the self.”

— M. Scott Peck

89. “When we cling, often forever, to our old patterns of thinking and behaving, we fall to negotiate any crisis, to truly grow up, and to experience the joyful sense of rebirth that accompanies the successful transition into greater maturity.”

— M. Scott Peck

90. “A discussion becomes destructive when it begins to generate more heat than light.”

— M. Scott Peck

91. “Whenever we think of ourselves as doing something for someone else, we are in some way denying our own responsibility. Whatever we do is done because we choose to do it, and we make that choice because it is the one that satisfies us the most.”

— M. Scott Peck

92. “The act of loving is an act of self-evolution even when the purpose of the act is someone else’s growth.”

— M. Scott Peck

93. “It is our task-our essential, central, crucial task-to transform ourselves from mere social creatures into community creatures.”

— M. Scott Peck

94. “Pseudocommunity is conflict-avoiding: true community is conflict-resolving.”

— M. Scott Peck

95. “The principal form that the work of love takes is attention. When we love another person we give him or her our attention; we attend to that person’s growth.”

— M. Scott Peck

96. “An unconscious, gentle process whereby people who want to be loving attempt to be so by telling little white lies, by withholding some of the truth about themselves and their feelings in order to avoid conflict. Pseudocommunity is conflict-avoiding; true community is conflict-resolving.”

— M. Scott Peck

97. “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.”

— M. Scott Peck

98. “When any institution becomes large and compartmentalized, with departments and subdepartments, then the conscience of the institution will often become so fragmented and diluted as to be virtually nonexistent, and the organization becomes inherently evil.”

— M. Scott Peck

99. “Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know how to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost.”

— M. Scott Peck

100. “I have learned nothing in twenty years that would suggest that evil people can be rapidly influenced by any means other than raw power. They do not respond, at least in the short run, to either gentle kindness or any form of spiritual persuasion with which I am familiar.”

— M. Scott Peck