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.
The human being needs a framework of values, a philosophy of life, a religion or religion-surrogate to live by and understand by, in about the same sense that he needs sunlight, calcium or love.
Life could be vastly improved if we could count our blessings as self-actualizing people can and do, and if we could retain their constant sense of good fortune and gratitude for it.
The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
One’s only failure is failing to live up to one’s own possibilities.
Creativity is a characteristic given to all human beings at birth.
Every person is, in part, ‘his own project’ and makes himself.
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
One of the goals of education should be to teach that life is precious.
Man has his future within him, dynamically alive at this present moment.
It isn’t normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.
The study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy.
What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualizat ion.
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.
The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.
A pedestrian hit me and went under my car.
We fear our highest possibility. We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments.
When we free ourselves from the constraints of ordinary goals and uninformed scoffers we will find ourselves roaring off the face of the earth.
Human beings seem to be far more autonomous and self-governed than modern psychological theory allows for.
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.