Abraham Maslow quotes

Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist and the founder of humanistic psychology. His hierarchy of needs theory is widely recognized in the fields of psychology, education, and business. He emphasized the importance of self-actualization for personal fulfillment and mental health. Here are 58 of his quotes:

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

Abraham Maslow

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

Abraham Maslow

It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

Abraham Maslow

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

Abraham Maslow

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

Abraham Maslow

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

Abraham Maslow

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.

Abraham Maslow

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

Abraham Maslow

[Concerning] the usual contempt with which an orthodox analytic group treats all outsiders and strangers ... I urge you to think of the young psychoanalysts as your colleagues, collaborators and partners and not as spies, traitors and wayward children. You can never develop a science that way, only an orthodox church.

Abraham Maslow

The best product should be bought, the best man should be rewarded more. Interfering factors which befuddle this triumph of virtue, justice, truth, and efficiency, etc., should be kept to an absolute minimum or should approach zero as a limit.

Abraham Maslow

You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.

Abraham Maslow

Education is learning to grow, learning what to grow toward, learning what is good and bad, learning what is desirable and undesirable, learning what to choose and what not to choose.

Abraham Maslow

One of the goals of education should be to teach that life is precious.

Abraham Maslow

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.

Abraham Maslow

Secrecy, censorship, dishonesty, and blocking of communication threaten all the basic needs.

Abraham Maslow

Love, safety, belongingness and respect from other people are almost panaceas for the situational disturbances and even for some of the mild character disturbances.

Abraham Maslow

Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred.

Abraham Maslow

Human beings seem to be far more autonomous and self-governed than modern psychological theory allows for.

Abraham Maslow

And I may add that it taught me something about the limitations of the small... orthodox scientist who won't recognize as knowledge, or as reality, any information that doesn't fit into the already existent science.

Abraham Maslow

Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be... In fact it can be said that the possibilities of human nature have customarily been sold short.

Abraham Maslow

A first rate soup is better than a second rate painting.

Abraham Maslow

We may define therapy as a search for value.

Abraham Maslow