Abraham Maslow was an academic, educator, psychologist, and scholar. He is most famous for his theory of “self-actualization.” This means that the happiest people were able to satisfy not only their basic needs, but also their psychological needs, fully incorporating elements of their personality into themselves and what they do.
Maslow was practitioner of humanistic psychology. During his lifetime, he published written works such as Motivation and Personality (1954), and Toward a Psychology of Being (1962). He was influenced by brilliant minds of his time, and he was one of the great contributors to the subject that we are familiar with today.
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Enjoy this collection of our favorite Abraham Maslow quotes.
Famous Abraham Maslow quotes on the hierarchy of needs
1. “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
2. “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.” – Abraham Maslow
3. “All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.” – Abraham Maslow
4. “What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.” – Abraham Maslow
5. “If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.” – Abraham Maslow
6. “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.” – Abraham Maslow
7. “If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” – Abraham Maslow
8. “Most people experience both tragedy and joy in varying proportions. Any philosophy which leaves out either cannot be considered to be comprehensive.” – Abraham Maslow
9. “The most fortunate are those who have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy.” – Abraham Maslow
10. “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
Abraham Maslow quotes on motivation and personal growth
11. “It isn’t normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.” – Abraham Maslow
12. “We need not take refuge in supernatural gods to explain our saints and sages and heroes and statesmen, as if to explain our disbelief that mere unaided human beings could be that good or wise.” – Abraham Maslow
13. “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
14. “What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.” – Abraham Maslow
15. “One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.” – Abraham Maslow
16. “Be independent of the good opinion of other people.” – Abraham Maslow
17. “Getting used to our blessings is one of the most important non-evil generators of human evil, tragedy and suffering.” – Abraham Maslow
18. “It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually.” – Abraham Maslow
19. “Self-actualizing people must be what they can be.” – Abraham Maslow
20. “False optimism sooner or later means disillusionment, anger and hopelessness.” – Abraham Maslow
Inspiring Abraham Maslow quotes about life
21. “One cannot choose wisely for a life unless he dares to listen to himself, his own self, at each moment of his life.” – Abraham Maslow
22. “If the essential core of the person is denied or suppressed, he gets sick sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes immediately, sometimes later.” – Abraham Maslow
23. “We must understand love; we must be able to teach it, to create it, to predict it, or else the world is lost to hostility and to suspicion.” – Abraham Maslow
24. “No great deed, private or public, has ever been undertaken in a bliss of certainty.” – Abraham Maslow
25. “The test of a man is: does he bear apples? Does he bear fruit?” – Abraham Maslow
26. “People are not evil; they are schlemiels.” – Abraham Maslow
27. “Expression and communication in the peak experiences tend often to become poetic, mythical, and rhapsodic, as if this were the natural kind of language to express such states of being.” – Abraham Maslow
28. “Self-actualizing people have a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general. They feel kinship and connection, as if all people were members of a single family.” – Abraham Maslow
29. “What one can be, one must be!” – Abraham Maslow
30. “The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.” – Abraham Maslow
More Abraham Maslow quotes and sayings
31. “I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.” – Abraham Maslow
32. “The great lesson from the true mystics is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, and in one’s backyard.” – Abraham Maslow
33. “I have learned the novice can often see things that the expert overlooks. All that is necessary is not to be afraid of making mistakes, or of appearing naive.” – Abraham Maslow
34. “Religion becomes a state of mind achievable in almost any activity of life, if this activity is raised to a suitable level of perfection.” – Abraham Maslow
35. “Creativity is a characteristic given to all human beings at birth.” – Abraham Maslow
Did you learn something from these Abraham Maslow quotes?
It’s not easy to reach a point of “self-actualization”. It’s a continued process – similar to self-improvement. Once you’ve accomplished your goals, there’s always more to do and to discover.
Don’t stop at one point! Life is an adventure – so go immerse yourself in it and see what you find out for yourself. Hopefully, you will keep these insightful Abraham Maslow quotes with you!
