What we call ‘normal’ in psychology is really a psychopathology of the average, so undramatic and so widely spread that we don’t even notice it ordinarily.
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.
My feeling is that the concept of creativeness and the concept of the healthy, self actualizing, fully human person seem to be coming closer and closer together, and may perhaps turn out to be the same thing.
False optimism sooner or later means disillusionment, anger and hopelessness.
Well why not a technology of joy, of happiness?
The spiritual life is part of the human essence. It is a defining characteristic of human nature, without which human nature is not fully human.
Love, safety, belongingness and respect from other people are almost panaceas for the situational disturbances and even for some of the mild character disturbances.
Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred.
The fact that people who create are good workers tends to be lost.
Secrecy, censorship, dishonesty, and blocking of communication threaten all the basic needs.
Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.
We have got to abandon the sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle if anybody created anything.
He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail.
We are dealing with a fundamental characteristic, inherent in human nature, a potentiality given to all or most human beings at birth, which most often is lost or buried or inhibited as the person gets enculturated.
It is vital that people “count their blessings:” to appreciate what they possess without having to undergo its actual loss.
Innocence can be redefined and called stupidity. Honesty can be called gullibility. Candor becomes lack of common sense. Interest in your work can be called cowardice. Generosity can be called soft-headedness, and observe : the former is disturbing.
Fear of knowing is very deeply a fear of doing.
The job is, if we are willing to take it seriously, to help ourselves to be more perfectly what we are, to be more full, more actualizing, more realizing in fact, what we are in potentiality.
Only the flexibly creative person can really manage the future, Only the one who can face novelty with confidence and without fear.
Since my mother is the type that’s called schizophrenogenic in the literature-she’s the one who makes crazy people, crazy children-I was awfully curious to find out why I didn’t go insane.
Getting used to our blessings is one of the most important non-evil generators of human evil, tragedy and suffering.