Abraham Maslow Quotes Proverbs, and Aphorisms

• April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970
• American
• Psychologist, Creator of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Humanistic Psychology Pioneer

Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist best known for developing the hierarchy of needs, a theory that outlines human motivation based on a progression of needs from basic survival to self-actualization. His model includes five levels: physiological needs, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization—the fulfillment of one’s potential. Maslow’s approach emphasized positive human potential and contributed to the field of humanistic psychology, focusing on personal growth, well-being, and intrinsic motivation. While his theory has been criticized for cultural bias and lack of empirical support, Maslow’s work remains influential in education, management, and psychology for its optimistic view of human development.

1. “If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.”
2. “We may define therapy as a search for value.”
3. “What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.”
4. “What we need is a system of thought – you might even call it a religion – that can bind humans together. A system that would fit the Republic of Chad as well as the United States: a system that would supply our idealistic young people with something to believe in.”
5. “The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side… It has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his psychological health.”
6. “We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.”
7. “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.”
8. “With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.”
9. “Education can become a self-fulfilling activity, liberating in and of itself.”
10. “With a tree, all the growth takes place at the growing tips. Humanity is exactly the same. All the growth takes place in the growing tip: among that one percent of the population. It’s made up of pioneers, the beginners. That’s where the action is.”
11. “But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.”
12. “What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.”
13. “Being a full human being is difficult, frightening, and problematical.”
14. “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.”
15. “The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.”
16. “It is as necessary for man to live in beauty rather than ugliness as it is necessary for him to have food for an aching belly or rest for a weary body.”
17. “If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
18. “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.”
19. “Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self actualization and the love for the highest values.”
20. “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.”
21. “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.”
22. “Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.”
23. “I was awfully curious to find out why I didn’t go insane.”
24. “Rioting is a childish way of trying to be a man, but it takes time to rise out of the hell of hatred and frustration and accept that to be a man you don’t have to riot.”
25. “If I were a Negro, I’d be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I’d rather go down with my flag flying. If you’re weak or crippled, or you can’t speak out or fight back in some way, then people don’t hesitate to treat you badly.”
26. “The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.”
27. “I’m someone who likes plowing new ground, then walking away from it. I get bored easily. For me, the big thrill comes with the discovering.”
28. “Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.”
29. “If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you’re just one more deluded Pollyanna.”
30. “Good psychology should include all the methodological techniques, without having loyalty to one method, one idea, or one person.”
31. “You can see neurosis from below – as a sickness – as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends.”
32. “Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.”
33. “A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.”