Abraham Maslow : Self-Actualization and Creativeness

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)

Quotes

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.

Toward a psychology of being

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The major motivation theories by which most men live can lead them only to depression and cynicism.

The healthy personality: readings

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When people appear to be something other than good and decent, it is only because they are reacting to stress, pain, or the deprivation of basic human needs such as security, love, and self-esteem.

Toward a psychology of being

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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. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature

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Every person is, in part, 'his own project' and makes himself.

Toward a Psychology of Being

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We can consider the process of healthy growth to be a never ending series of free choice situations, confronting each individual at every point throughout his life, in which he must choose between the delights of safety and growth, dependence and independence, regression and progression, immaturity and maturity.

Toward a psychology of being

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If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature

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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.

The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance

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The loss of illusions and the discovery of identity, though painful at first, can be ultimately exhilarating and strengthening.

Toward a psychology of being

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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.

Maslow on management

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People with intelligence must use their intelligence, people with eyes must use their eyes, people with the capacity to love have the impulse to love and the need to love in order to feel healthy. Capacities clamor to be used, and cease in their clamor only when they are used sufficiently. That is to say, capacities are needs, and therefore are intrinsic values as well.

Toward a psychology of being

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A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization. .. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming. Motivation and Personality

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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.

The healthy personality: readings

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It looks as if there were a single ultimate goal for mankind, a far goal toward which all persons strive. This is called variously by different authors self-actualization, self-realization, integration, psychological health, individuation, autonomy, creativity, productivity, but they all agree that this amounts to realizing the potentialities of the person, that is to say, becoming fully human, everything that person can be.

Toward a psychology of being

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