Top 250 M. Scott Peck Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “As I have defined it, love is the antithesis of laziness. Ordinary laziness is a passive failure to love. Some ordinarily lazy people may not lift a finger to extend themselves unless they are compelled to do so. Their being is a manifestation of nonlove; still, they are not evil.”

— M. Scott Peck

102. “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

103. “A life of total dedication to the truth also means a life of willingness to be personally challenged.”

— M. Scott Peck

104. “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

105. “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

106. “Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience.”

— M. Scott Peck

107. “Love always requires courage and involves risk.”

— M. Scott Peck

108. “The perception that we are loving when we fall in love is an illusion. Real love does not have its roots in a feeling of love. Real love often occurs when a feeling of love is lacking.”

— M. Scott Peck

109. “If we deny our anger, our pain, our ambition, or our goodness, we will suffer.”

— M. Scott Peck

110. “Since mentally healthy human beings must grow, and since giving up or loss of the old self is an integral part of the process of mental and spiritual growth, depression is a normal and basically healthy phenomenon. It becomes abnormal or unhealthy only when something interferes with the giving-up process, with the result that the depression is prolonged and cannot be resolved by completion of the.”

— M. Scott Peck

111. “A full life will be full of pain. But the only alternative is not to live fully or not to live at all.”

— M. Scott Peck

112. “There is no worse bitterness than to reach the end of your life and realized you have not lived.”

— M. Scott Peck

113. “If we kill those who are evil, we will become evil ourselves; we will be killers. If we attempt to deal with evil by destroying it, we will also end up destroying ourselves, spiritually if not physically. Evil can be defeated by goodness. Evil can be conquered only by love. We must somehow be both tolerant and intolerant, accepting and demanding, strict and flexible. An almost godlike compassion is required.”

— M. Scott Peck

114. “When we teach ourselves and our children discipline, we are teaching them and ourselves how to suffer and also how to grow.”

— M. Scott Peck

115. “Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity.”

— M. Scott Peck

116. “There really are people, and institutions made up of people, who respond with hatred in the presence of goodness and would destroy the good insofar as it is in their power to do so. They do this not with conscious malice but blindly, lacking awareness of their own evil – indeed, seeking to avoid any such awareness.”

— M. Scott Peck

117. “And since life poses an endless series of problems, life is always difficult and is full of pain as well as joy.”

— M. Scott Peck

118. “Although the act of nurturing another’s spiritual growth has the effect of nurturing one’s own, a major characteristic of genuine love is that the distinction between oneself and the other is always maintained and preserved.”

— M. Scott Peck

119. “I guess if you want to know one single thing I’m about, it’s that I’m against easy answers.”

— M. Scott Peck

120. “We cannot let another person into our hearts or minds unless we empty ourselves. We can truly listen to him or truly hear her only out of emptiness.”

— M. Scott Peck

121. “The tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness. Since all of us have this tendency to a greater or lesser degree, all of us are mentally ill to a greater or lesser degree.”- M. Scott Peck.”

— M. Scott Peck

122. “America’s greatest sin is the refusal to delay gratification.”

— M. Scott Peck

123. “The more effort we make to appreciate and perceive reality, the larger and more accurate our maps will be. But many do not want to make this effort.”

— M. Scott Peck

124. “This inclination to ignore problems is once again a simple manifestation of an unwillingness to delay gratification. Confronting problems is, as I have said, painful. To willingly confront a problem early, before we are forced to confront it by circumstances, means to put aside something pleasant or less painful for something more painful. It is choosing to suffer now in the hope of future gratification rather than choosing to continue present gratification in the hope that future suffering will not be necessary.”

— M. Scott Peck

125. “To confront one’s beloved is to assume a position of moral or intellectual superiority over the loved one, at least so far as the issue at hand is concerned. Yet genuine love recognizes and respects the unique individuality and separate identity of the other person.”

— M. Scott Peck

126. “To nourish the spirit the body must also be nourished.”

— M. Scott Peck

127. “But while all fear is not laziness, much fear is exactly that. Much of our fear is fear of a change in the status quo, a fear that we might lose what we have if we venture forth from where we are now. In the section on discipline I spoke of the fact.”

— M. Scott Peck

128. “We have a situation in which human beings, who must deal with each other, have vastly different views as to the nature of reality, yet each one believes his or her own view to be the correct one since it is based on the microcosm of personal experience.”

— M. Scott Peck

129. “If there were but one thing I could hope for from the reader of the remainder of this book, it would be that he or she possesses the capacity to perceive the miraculous.”

— M. Scott Peck

130. “As I grow through love, so grows my joy, ever more present, ever more constant.”

— M. Scott Peck

131. “Any genuinely loving relationship is one of mutual psychotherapy.”

— M. Scott Peck

132. “For any single thing of importance, there are multiple reasons.”

— M. Scott Peck

133. “This feeling of being valuable is a cornerstone of self-discipline because when one considers oneself valuable one will take care of oneself in all ways that are necessary.”

— M. Scott Peck

134. “Most people who come to see a psychiatrist are suffering from what is called either a neurosis or a character disorder... When neurotics are in conflict with the world they automatically assume that they are at fault. When those with character disorders are in conflict with the world they automatically assume that the world is at fault.”

— M. Scott Peck

135. “Benjamin Franklin said, “Those things that hurt, instruct.”

— M. Scott Peck

136. “But the fact of the matter is that everyone has an explicit or implicit set of ideas and beliefs as to the essential nature of the world.”

— M. Scott Peck

137. “If I truly love another, I will obviously order my behavior in such a way as to contribute the utmost to his or her spiritual growth.”

— M. Scott Peck

138. “Discipline, it has been suggested, is the means of human spiritual evolution. This.”

— M. Scott Peck

139. “For the most part, mental illness is caused by an absence of or defect in the love that a particular child required from its particular parents for successful maturation and spiritual growth. It.”

— M. Scott Peck

140. “Great marriages cannot be constructed by individuals who are terrified by their basic aloneness, as so commonly is the case, and seek a merging in marriage. Genuine love not only respects the individuality of the other but actually seeks to cultivate it, even at the risk of separation or loss. The ultimate goal of life remains the spiritual growth of the individual, the solitary journey to peaks that can be climbed only alone.”

— M. Scott Peck

141. “Commitment is inherent in any genuinely loving relationship.”

— M. Scott Peck

142. “When we love something it is of value to us, and when something is of value to us we spend time with it, time enjoying it and time taking care of it...”

— M. Scott Peck

143. “The feeling of being valuable – “I am a valuable person” – is essential to mental health and is a cornerstone of self-discipline. It is a direct product of parental love. Such a conviction must be gained in childhood; it is extremely difficult to acquire it during adulthood. Conversely, when children have learned through the love of their parents to feel valuable, it is almost impossible for the vicissitudes of adulthood to destroy their spirit.”

— M. Scott Peck

144. “There is no virtue inherent in un-constructive suffering.”

— M. Scott Peck

145. “Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional.”

— M. Scott Peck

146. “The feeling of love is the emotion that accompanies the experience of cathecting. Cathecting, it will be remembered, is the process by which an object becomes important to us. Once cathected, the object, commonly referred to as a “love object,” is invested with our energy as if it were a part of ourselves, and this relationship between us and the invested object is called a cathexis.”

— M. Scott Peck

147. “There are four: delaying of gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth, and balancing. As will be evident, these are not complex tools whose application demands extensive training. To the contrary, they are simple tools, and almost all children are adept in their use by the age of.”

— M. Scott Peck

148. “To fail to confront when confrontation is required for the nurture of spiritual growth represents a failure to love equally as does thoughtless criticism or condemnation and other forms of active deprivation of caring.”

— M. Scott Peck

149. “I have said I have met Satan, and this is true. But it is not tangible. It no more has horns, hooves and a forked tail than God has a long white beard. Even the name, Satan, is just a name we have given to something basically nameless.”

— M. Scott Peck

150. “In the succinctly elegant words of Carl Jung, “Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.”2.”

— M. Scott Peck