Abraham Maslow
Hierarchy of needs, self-actualization
Most quoted
"The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side... It has revealed to us much about man's shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his full psychological height."
— from Motivation and Personality, 1954
"Self-actualizing people are those who have come to a high level of maturation, health and self-fulfillment... the values that self-actualizers appreciate include truth, creativity, beauty, goodness, wholeness, aliveness, uniqueness, justice, simplicity, and self-sufficiency."
— from Motivation and Personality, 1954
"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."
— from Eupsychian Management
All quotes by Abraham Maslow (211)
We must teach people to be human, to be good, to be kind, to be loving, to be creative, to be self-actualizing.
The most important learning for a child is to learn to be himself.
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.
We must understand that the human being is a being who is always in the process of becoming.
The more we learn about man's natural tendencies, the more we can see how much of our present social arrangements are out of tune with them.
We are not strong enough to bear the truth about ourselves.
The only happy people I know are the ones who are working on something bigger than themselves.
We are all motivated by two main needs: the need to belong and the need to become.
Growth is a series of choices between safety and risk. Make the growth choice a dozen times a day.
Self-actualizing people are, without one exception, involved in a cause outside their own skin, in something outside of themselves.
The fully actualized person is one who has come to terms with his own death.
The sacred is in the ordinary, in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, in one's job, in one's partner, in one's food, in one's everyday life.
A peak-experience is a moment of intense joy, wonder, and ecstasy, when the individual feels more whole, more integrated, more aware of himself and the world.
The human being is a being who is always in the process of becoming, and this process is never finished.
To be healthy, to be fully human, to be fully actualized, means to be able to be in the present moment.
The more we know about man's natural tendencies, the more we can see how much of our present social arrangements are out of tune with them.
The ultimate goal of therapy is to help people become more fully human.
We fear our highest possibilities.
The only way to be truly happy is to be truly yourself.
The spiritual life is not a life apart from the world, but a life in the world, lived with a deeper meaning and purpose.
Contemporaries of Abraham Maslow
Other Psychologys born within 50 years of Abraham Maslow (1908–1970).