110+ Abraham Maslow Quotes On Self Actualization, Motivation And Hierarchy Needs

Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist best known for his theory of self-actualization. He proposed a hierarchy of needs, beginning with basic physiological needs and progressing up through safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. His ideas have been influential in the fields of education, clinical psychology, and business management. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Abraham Maslow on self actualization, motivation, hierarchy needs.

Top 10 Abraham Maslow Quotes

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. You will either step forward into growth, or you will step backward into safety.
3. 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.
4. If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
5. All of life is education and everybody is a teacher and everybody is forever a pupil.
6. What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.

Abraham Maslow Image Quotes

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself. — Abraham Maslow

One's only failure is failing to live up to one's own possibilities. — Abraham Maslow

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth. — Abraham Maslow

Language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication. — Abraham Maslow

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting. — Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow Short Quotes

• One's only failure is failing to live up to one's own possibilities.
• Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.
• One of the goals of education should be to teach that life is precious.
• Language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.
• The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
• A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.
• The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.
• What is life for? Life is for you.
• One can go back toward safety or forward toward growth.
• Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred.

Abraham Maslow Quotes About Self Actualization

A positive self image and healthy self esteem is based on approval, acceptance and recognition from others; but also upon actual accomplishments, achievements and success upon the realistic self confidence which ensues. — Abraham Maslow

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

Self-actualizing people are those who have come to a high level of maturation, health and self-fulfillment... the values that self-actualizers appreciate include truth, creativity, beauty, goodness, wholeness, aliveness, uniqueness, justice, simplicity, and self-sufficiency. — Abraham Maslow

What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization. — Abraham Maslow

Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What human beings can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature. This need we may call self-actualization. — Abraham Maslow

Whereas the average individuals "often have not the slightest idea of what they are, of what they want, of what their own opinions are," self-actualizing individuals have "superior awareness of their own impulses, desires, opinions, and subjective reactions in general." — Abraham Maslow

(Some people) 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

I think of the self-actualizing man not as an ordinary man with something added, but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away. The average man is a full human being with dampened and inhibited powers and capabilities. — Abraham Maslow

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. — Abraham Maslow

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. — Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow Quotes About Motivation

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

A stupid man behaves stupidly, not because he wants to, or tries to, or is motivated to, but simply because he is what he is. — Abraham Maslow

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

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. — Abraham Maslow

Getting used to our blessings is one of the most important non-evil generators of human evil, tragedy and suffering. — Abraham Maslow

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

We do what we are and we are what we do. — Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow Quotes About Love

The most beautiful fate, the most wonderful good fortune that can happen to any human being, is to be paid for doing that which he passionately loves to do. — Abraham Maslow

If both the physiological and the safety needs are fairly well gratified, then there will emerge love and affection and belongingness needs, and the whole cycle already described will repeat itself with this new centre. Now the person will feel keenl — Abraham Maslow

No psychological health is possible unless this essential care of the person is fundamentally accepted, loved and respected by others and by himself. — Abraham Maslow

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. — Abraham Maslow

Love, safety, belongingness and respect from other people are almost panaceas for the situational disturbances and even for some of the mild character disturbances. — Abraham Maslow

If you love the truth, you'll trust it - that is, you will expect it to be good, beautiful, perfect, orderly, etc., in the long run, not necessarily in the short run. — Abraham Maslow

I may say that B-love, in a profound but testable sense, creates the partner. It gives him a self-image, it gives him self- acceptance, a feeling of love-worthiness, all of which permit him to grow. It is a real question whether the full development of the human being is possible without it. — Abraham Maslow

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

Abraham Maslow Quotes About Self-actualization

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 — Abraham Maslow

Self-actualizing people must be what they can be. — Abraham Maslow

Self-actualized people...live more in the real world of nature than in the man-made mass of concepts, abstractions, expectations, beliefs and stereotypes that most people confuse with the world. — Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow Quotes About Nail

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. — Abraham Maslow

He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail. — Abraham Maslow

To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail. — Abraham Maslow

It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. — Abraham Maslow

When all you own is a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail. — Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow Famous Quotes And Sayings

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself. — Abraham Maslow

You must want to be first-class ...meaning the best, the very best you are capable of becoming. 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. — Abraham Maslow

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth. — Abraham Maslow

Language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication. — Abraham Maslow

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting. — Abraham Maslow

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 — Abraham Maslow

We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already have capacities, talents, direction, missions, callings. — Abraham Maslow

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

The study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy — Abraham Maslow

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

Human nature has been sold short...[humans have] a higher nature which...includes the need for meaningful work, for responsibility, for creativeness, for being fair and just, for doing what is worthwhile and for preferring to do it well. — Abraham Maslow

The way to recover the meaning of life and the worthwhileness of life is to recover the power of experience, to have impulse voices from within, and to be able to hear these impulse voices from within — and make the point: This can be done. — Abraham Maslow

When we free ourselves from the constraints of ordinary goals and uninformed scoffers we will find ourselves roaring off the face of the earth. — Abraham Maslow

The good or healthy society would then be defined as one that permitted people's highest purposes to emerge by satisfying all their basic needs. — Abraham Maslow

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

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

We fear our highest possibility. We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments. — Abraham Maslow

We cannot study creativeness in an ultimate sense until we realize that practically all the definitions that we have been using of creativeness are essentially male or masculine definitions of male or masculine products. We've left out of consideration almost entirely the creativeness of women. — Abraham Maslow

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. — Abraham Maslow

The sacred is in the ordinary...it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's own backyard...travel may be a flight from confronting the scared--this lesson can be easily lost. To be looking elsewhere for miracles is to me a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous. — Abraham Maslow

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

Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? ...a good question might be not why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate? — Abraham Maslow

Only the flexibly creative person can really manage the future, Only the one who can face novelty with confidence and without fear. — Abraham Maslow

The most stable, and therefore, the most healthy self-esteem is based on deserved respect from others rather than on external fame or celebrity and unwarranted adulation. — Abraham Maslow

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. — Abraham Maslow

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

What does 'happy' mean? Happiness is not a state like Vermont. — Abraham Maslow

The emotional reaction in the peak experience has a special flavor of wonder, of awe, of reverence, of humility and surrender before the experience as before something great. — Abraham Maslow

We have got to abandon the sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle if anybody created anything. — Abraham Maslow

The theory of science which permits and encourages the exclusion of so much that is true and real and existent cannot be considered a comprehensive science. — Abraham Maslow

The search for safety takes its clearest form... in the compulsive-obsessive neurosis... to frantically order and stabilize the world so that no unmanageable, unexpected or unfamiliar dangers will ever appear. — Abraham Maslow

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves. — Abraham Maslow

Even when adults do feel their safety to be threatened, we may not be able to see this on the surface. Infants will react in a fashion as if they were endangered, if they are disturbed or dropped suddenly, startled by loud noises, flashing light — Abraham Maslow

If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life. — Abraham Maslow

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

An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my vehicle and vanished. — Abraham Maslow

The key question isn't, 'What fosters creativity?' But it is, 'Why isn't everyone creative?' — Abraham Maslow

Creative people are all there, totally immersed, fascinated and absorbed in the present, in the current situation, in the here-now, with the matter-in-hand. — Abraham Maslow

The best product should be bought, the best man should be rewarded more. Interfering factors which befuddle this triumph of virtue, justice, truth, and efficiency, etc., should be kept to an absolute minimum or should approach zero as a limit. — Abraham Maslow

Become aware of internal, subjective, sub-verbal experiences, so that these experiences can be brought into the world of abstraction. — Abraham Maslow

...the great lesson 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, in one's backyard. — Abraham Maslow

Secrecy, censorship, dishonesty, and blocking of communication threaten all the basic needs. — Abraham Maslow

In a word, to perceive an object abstractly means not to perceive some aspects of it. It clearly implies selection of some attributes, rejection of other attributes, creation or distortion of still others. We make of it what we wish. We create it. — Abraham Maslow

There is, first, the desire for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for confidence in the face of the world, and for independence and freedom. Secondly, we have what we may call the desire for reputation or prestige — Abraham Maslow

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

A child wants some kind of undisrupted routine or rhythm. He seems to want a predictable, orderly world. — Abraham Maslow

Apparently one impression we are making... is that creativeness consists of lightning striking you on the head in one great glorious moment. — Abraham Maslow

Quitting smoking can be a very good test of ones character. Pass the test and you will have accomplished so much more than just get rid of one bad habit — Abraham Maslow

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

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. — Abraham Maslow

The fact that people who create are good workers tends to be lost. — Abraham Maslow

What shall we think of a well-adjusted slave? — Abraham Maslow

There seems no intrinsic reason why everyone shouldn't be (self-actualising). Apparently every baby has possibilities for self-actualisation, but most get it knocked out of them ...I think of the self-actualising man not as an ordinary man with something added, but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away. — Abraham Maslow

Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering — Abraham Maslow

As one studies these preconditions, one becomes saddened by the ease with which human potentiality can be destroyed or repressed, so that a fully-human person can seem like a miracle, so improbable a happening as to be awe-inspiring. And simultaneously one is heartened by the fact that self-actualizing persons do in fact exist, that they are therefore possible, that the gauntlet of dangers can be run, that the finish line can be crossed. — Abraham Maslow

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. — Abraham Maslow

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. — Abraham Maslow

I have discovered the missing link between the anthropoid apes and civilized men. It's us! — Abraham Maslow

The human being is so constructed that he pressed toward fuller and fuller being. — Abraham Maslow

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 their clamor only when they are used sufficiently. That is to say, capacities are needs, and therefore are intrinsic values as well. — Abraham Maslow

We fear our highest possibilities. We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments, under conditions of great courage. We enjoy and even thrill to godlike possibilities we see in ourselves in such peak moments. And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these very same possibilities. — Abraham Maslow

False optimism sooner or later means disillusionment , anger and hopelessness. — Abraham Maslow

Man is a perpetually wanting animal. — Abraham Maslow

What kind of guilt comes from being true to yourself but not to others?. As we have seen, being true to yourself may at times intrinsically and necessarily be in conflict with being true to others. — Abraham Maslow

A person who makes full use of and exploits his talents, potentialities, and capacities. Such a person seems to be fulfilling himself and doing the best he is capable of doing. The self-actualized person must find in his life those qualities that make his living rich and rewarding. He must find meaningfulness, self-sufficiency, effortlessness, playfulness, richness, simplicity, completion, necessity, perfection, individuality, beauty, and truth. — Abraham Maslow

Human beings seem to be far more autonomous and self-governed than modern psychological theory allows for. — Abraham Maslow

Common sense means living in the world as it is today; but creative people are people who don't want the world as it is today but want to make another world. — Abraham Maslow

Plateau experiencing can be achieved, learned, earned by long hard work.... A transient glimpse is certainly possible in the peak experiences which may, after all, come sometimes to anyone. But, so to speak, to take up residence on the high plateau .... that is another matter altogether. That tends to be a lifelong effort. — Abraham Maslow

The key question isn't "What fosters creativity?" But why in God's name isn't everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might not be why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate? We have got to abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle that anybody created anything. — Abraham Maslow

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. — Abraham Maslow

Life Lessons by Abraham Maslow

1. Abraham Maslow's theories on self-actualization and the hierarchy of needs emphasize the importance of understanding our own needs and striving to fulfill them in order to become our best selves.
2. His theories also emphasize the importance of understanding the needs of others and creating an environment in which everyone can reach their full potential.
3. By understanding and applying Maslow's theories, we can learn to prioritize our needs and the needs of others in order to create a more fulfilling and meaningful life.