Carl Rogers
Founder of client-centered therapy
Most quoted
"When the other person is hurting, confused, troubled, anxious, alienated, terrified; or when he or she is doubtful of self-worth, uncertain as to identity, then understanding is called for. The gentle and sensitive companionship of an empathic stance… provides illumination and healing. In such situations deep understanding is, I believe, the most precious gift one can give to another."
— from A Way of Being, 1980
"I have found the greater the degree of congruence of experience, awareness, and communication on the part of one individual, the more the ensuing relationship will involve: a tendency toward reciprocal communication; a tendency toward more mutually accurate understanding; improved psychological adjustment and functioning in both parties; mutual satisfaction in the relationship."
— from A Theory of Therapy, Personality and Interpersonal Relationships, 1959
"I believe it will have become evident why, for me, adjectives such as happy, contented, blissful, enjoyable, do not seem quite appropriate to any general description of this process I have called the good life… I believe they would be perceived as by-products of the directions I have described."
— from On Becoming a Person, 1961
All quotes by Carl Rogers (245)
The only person who can educate you is yourself.
The more I am able to be myself, the more I am able to trust myself.
The greatest gift you can give someone is the gift of your presence.
The only way to be truly happy is to be truly yourself.
I have learned that I cannot force growth, but I can provide an environment where growth can occur.
The only real security is the ability to cope with insecurity.
The more I am able to listen, the more I am able to learn.
The only way to understand life is to live it.
I have found that when I am able to be truly present with another person, something magical happens.
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
The very essence of the human person is that he is a being in process, a being who is becoming.
Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience.
We are, in a very real sense, the architects of our own experience.
The fully functioning person is a person who is able to live in the present, to be open to experience, to trust his or her own organismic valuing process, and to be creative.
The only reality I can possibly know is the reality I perceive at this moment.
Growth occurs when individuals confront problems, struggle to master them, and through that struggle develop new aspects of their competence.
The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a system.
When a person is understood, he or she feels accepted, and acceptance is a powerful catalyst for change.
The core of man's nature is essentially positive.
We are not just rational beings; we are also feeling beings, and our feelings are an important source of information.
Contemporaries of Carl Rogers
Other Psychologys born within 50 years of Carl Rogers (1902–1987).