Toward a Psychology of Being Quotes

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
― Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“Seeing is better than being blind, even when seeing hurts.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“False optimism sooner or later means disillusionment, anger and hopelessness.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“Every human being has both sets of forces within him. One set clings to safety and defensiveness out of fear, tending to regress backward, hanging on to the past, afraid to grow away from the primitive communication with the mother’s uterus and breast, afraid to take chances, afraid to jeopardize what he already has, afraid of independence, freedom and separateness. The other set of forces impels him forward toward wholeness of Self and uniqueness of Self, toward full functioning of all his capacities, toward confidence in the face of the external world at the same time that he can accept his deepest, real, unconscious Self.”
― Abraham Harold Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“Not allowing people to go through their pain, and protecting them from it, may turn out to be a kind of over-protection, which in turn implies a certain lack of respect for the integrity and the intrinsic nature and the future development of the individual.”
― Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“In a word, growth and improvement can come through pain and conflict.”
― Abraham Harold Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“Perhaps adjustment and stabilization, while good because it cuts your pain, is also bad because development towards a higher ideal ceases?”
― Abraham Harold Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“The needs for safety, belonging, love relations and for respect can be satisfied only by other people, i.e., only from outside the person. This means considerable dependence on the environment. A person in this dependent position cannot really be said to be governing himself, or in control of his own fate. He must be beholden to the sources of supply of needed gratifications. Their wishes, their whims, their rules and laws govern him and must be appeased lest he jeopardize his sources of supply. He must be, to an extent, “other-directed,” and must be sensitive to other people’s approval, affection and good will. This is the same as saying that he must adapt and adjust by being flexible and responsive and by changing himself to fit the external situation. He is the dependent variable; the environment is the fixed, independent variable.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“Most people experience both tragedy and joy in varying proportions. Any philosophy which leaves out either cannot be considered to be comprehensive.”
― Abraham Harold Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“creativeness comes partly out of the unconscious, i.e., is a healthy regression, a temporary turning away from the real world.”
― Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“Knowledge and action are very closely bound together, all agree. I go much further, and am convinced that knowledge and action are frequently synonymous, even identical in the Socratic fashion. Where we know fully and completely, suitable action follows automatically and reflexly. Choices are then made without conflict and with full spontaneity.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“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 H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“The question of desirable grief and pain or the necessity for it must also be faced. [Are] growth and self-fulfillment possible at all without pain and grief and sorrow and turmoil? If grief and pain are sometimes necessary for growth of the person, then we must learn not to protect people from them automatically as if they were always bad.

Not allowing people to go through their pain, and protecting them from it, may turn out to be a kind of overprotection, which in turn implies a certain lack of respect for the integrity and the intrinsic nature and the future development of the individual.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“I believe that another task which needs doing before we can have a good world is the development of a humanistic and transpersonal psychology of evil, one written out of compassion and love for human nature rather than out of disgust with it or out of hopelessness.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“The person who hasn't conquered, withstood and overcome continues to feel doubtful that he could. This is true not only for external dangers; it holds also for the ability to control and to delay one's own impulses, and therefore to be unafraid of them.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“Hasta insanlar, hasta bir kültürün ürünleridir. Sağlıklı insanlar ise ancak sağlıklı bir kültürde yetişebilirler. Bununla birlikte, hasta insanların yaşadıkları kültürü daha da bozduğu, sağlıklı insanların ise daha sağlıklı bir kültür yarattığı da bir gerçektir. Bireyin sağlığını geliştirmek daha iyi bir dünya yaratmanın yollarından biridir. Diğer bir deyişle, kişisel gelişimin özendirilme olasılığı yüksektir; var olan nevrotik belirtilerin yardım olmadan sağaltılabilme olasılığı ise daha düşüktür. Bir insanın daha dürüst olmayı seçmesi, kendi takıntı ve saplantıların sağaltmaya çalışmasından çok daha kolaydır.”
― Abraham Maslow, İnsan Olmanın Psikolojisi

“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 Harold Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“Existentialism rests on phenomenology, i.e., it uses personal, subjective experience as the foundation upon which abstract knowledge is built.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“All that is needed for science to be a help in positive human fulfillment is an enlarging and deepening of the conception of its nature, its goals and its methods.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“If the study of the uniqueness of the individual does not fit into what we know of science, then so much the worse for that conception of science. It, too, will have to endure re-creation.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“Historically, we are in a value interregnum in which all externally given value systems have proven to be failures (political, economic, religious, etc.) e.g., nothing is worth dying for. What man needs but doesn’t have, he seeks for unceasingly, and he becomes dangerously ready to jump at any hope, good or bad.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“Certainly it seems more and more clear that 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 existentialist's study of the authentic person and of authentic living helps to throw this general phoniness, this living by illusions and by fear into a harsh, clear light which reveals it clearly as sickness, even though widely shared.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“The thing to do seems to be to find out what you are really like inside, deep down, as a member of the human species and as a particular individual.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“The net results ultimately are either one or the other—either we respect and accept ourselves or we despise ourselves and feel contemptible, worthless, and unlovable.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“Horney had a good word to describe this unconscious perceiving and remembering; she said it “registers.” If we do something we are ashamed of, it “registers”to our discredit, and if we do something honest or fine or good, it “registers”to our credit.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“To me existential psychology means essentially two main emphases.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“First, it is a radical stress on the concept of identity and the experience of identity as a sine qua non of human nature and of any philosophy or science of human nature.”
― Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being