Maslow Quotes

Wisdom in a Nutshell

Abraham Maslow Photo

"What shall we think of a well-adjusted slave?"

Abraham Maslow

Maslow's Hammer - paraphrased many ways

"When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail."
"He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail."
"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."
"If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."
"To the man who only has a hammer in the toolkit, every problem looks like a nail."
"When all you own is a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail."

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

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

"If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The way to recover the meaning of life and the worthwhileness of life is to recover the power of experience, to have impulse voices from within, and to be able to hear these impulse voices from within-and make the point: This can be done."

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

"The neurosis in which the search for safety takes its clearest form is in the compulsive-obsessive neurosis. Compulsive-obsessive to frantically order and stabilize the world so that no unmanageable, unexpected or unfamiliar dangers will ever appear."

"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 behavior."

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

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

"If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life."

"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."

"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."

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

"But behavior 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."

"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."

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."

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

"Victory depends on whether or not a duelist has the courage to fight until the bitter end."

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

"The good society is one in which virtue pays."

"What shall we think of a well-adjusted slave?"

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

"It is quite true that humans live by bread alone-when there is no bread."

"Sickness might consist of not having symptoms when you should."

"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.'"

"Logical positivism has been a failure."

"Another consequence for my thinking of this stress on the twofold nature of man is the realization that some problems must remain eternally insoluble."

"Tragedy can sometimes be therapeutic."

"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."

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

"Ultimately the person, even the child, must choose for himself."

"Even the 'bad' choice is 'good for' the neurotic chooser."

"The single holistic principle that binds together the multiplicity of human motives is the tendency for a new and higher need to emerge as the lower need fulfills itself by being sufficiently gratified."

"The really bright student, the eager questioner, the probing searcher, especially if he is brighter than his teacher, is too often seen as a 'wise guy,' a threat to discipline, a challenger of his teacher's authority."

"Contemporary psychology has mostly studied not-having rather than having, striving rather than fulfillment, frustration rather than gratification, seeking for joy rather than having attained joy, trying to get there rather than being there."

"It is possible in the aesthetic experience or the love experience to become so absorbed and 'poured into' the object that the self, in a very real sense, disappears."

"In the cognition of the peak-experience, the will does not interfere."

"Self-actualization is a matter of degree and of frequency rather than an all-or-none affair."

"The lover perceives in the beloved what no one else can."

"A husband's conviction that his wife is beautiful, or a wife's firm belief that her husband is courageous, to some extent creates the beauty or the courage. This is not so much a perception of something that already exists as a brining into existence by belief."

"Partly identity is whatever we say it is."

"People in peak-experiences are most their identities, closest to their real selves, most idiosyncratic."

"What is tragic and real and unique to the child cannot be laughed at even though it has happened and will happen to millions of others."

"People with the capacity to love have the impulse to love and the need to love in order to feel healthy. Capacity clamors to be used, and cease their clamor only when they are used sufficiently."

"I have discovered the missing link between the anthropoid apes and civilized men. It's us!"

"We must learn to think holistically rather than atomistically."

"Almost all needs, capacities, and talents can be satisfied in a variety of ways."

"Every person is, in part, 'his own project' and makes himself."

"The human being is simultaneously that which he is and that which he yearns to be."

"It should be pointed out that any of the physiological needs and the consummatory behavior involved with them serve as channels for all sorts of other needs as well. A person who thinks he is hungry may actually be seeking more for comfort, or dependence, than for vitamins or proteins."

"Culture itself is an adaptive tool . . ."

"People who have been made secure and strong in the earliest years tend to remain secure and strong thereafter in the face of whatever threatens."

"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."

"Who is to say that a lack of love is less important than a lack of vitamins?"

"Man is a perpetually wanting animal."

"The more evolved and psychologically healthy people get, the more will enlightened management policy be necessary in order to survive in competition and the more handicapped will be an enterprise with an authoritarian policy."

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