Abraham Maslow is one of the important psychologists of the 20th century He is known as the father of one of the great currents of psychology, humanism. His theory, known as the Pyramid of the Hierarchy of Human Needs, is born from the idea that the actions of human beings are born from motivation directed towards the objective of meeting certain needs.
At the highest level of this pyramid, there are self-realization needs, which are internal needs, spiritual, moral or seeking a mission in life.
In this article, We have compiled the best phrases, famous quotes and reflections of Abraham Maslow
1. Self-actualized people have a deep sense of identification, sympathy and affection for human beings in general. They feel kinship and connection, as if all people were members of their family
When we feel self-actualized, we will feel good and have higher self-esteem. Which, in turn, will impact relationships with others.
2. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write. What a man can be, he must be
One must fight for what one really loves to give meaning to one’s life.
3. Be independent of other people’s good opinion
One must find in oneself the motivations that make one happy.
4. We can orient ourselves towards defense, security or fear. But, on the opposite side, there is the option of growth. Choosing growth instead of fear twelve times a day means moving towards self-realization twelve times a day.
Maslow is known as one of the most influential psychologists in personal development.
5. We must understand love, we must be able to teach it, create it, predict it, or else the world is lost in hostility and suspicion.
Love is one of the most pleasant sensations you can feel in life. It is our great motivation.
6. The people we classify as sick are those who are not themselves, those who have created all kinds of neurotic defenses
Abraham Maslow is one of the psychologists who originated positive psychology.
7. If you deliberately plan to be less than what you are capable of being, I warn you that you will be deeply unhappy for the rest of your days.
When someone has a goal in life, they must fight for it.
8. One can choose to move towards security or to move towards growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.
Maslow’s pyramid has several stages and each of them must be overcome to continue.
9. Many of us, most of the time, do not listen to ourselves, but rather we listen to the introjected voices of mom, dad, the system, elders, authority or tradition
Culture and environment affect how we think. Many times, not allowing us to hear what we want to tell ourselves.
10. In certain definable and empirical senses, man needs to live in beauty rather than in ugliness, just as he needs to have food for his hungry stomach or rest for his tired stomach.
A thought-provoking quote from Abraham Maslow.
11. I have the impression that the concept of creativity and that of a healthy, self-realizing and fully human person are increasingly closer to each other and perhaps they will turn out to be the same
Abraham Maslow, in reference to creativity.
12. One cannot choose wisely in life unless he dares to listen to himself, his own self, in every moment of his life.
For this author, people are active agents of our change.
13. Satisfying the need for self-esteem leads to feelings of self-confidence, worth, strength, capacity and sufficiency, of being useful and necessary in the world
There is a close relationship between self-esteem and self-confidence.
14. The study of motivation must be, in part, the study of the ultimate goals, desires or needs of the human being.
Maslow contributed great knowledge to theories of motivation.
Humanistic therapy is based on the idea that self-realization and personal well-being are related.
16. To invent or create it is necessary to possess the “arrogance of creativity” that many researchers have pointed out. But if you only have arrogance without humility, then you are paranoid. We must be aware not only of the divine possibilities in us, but also of the existential human limitations
It is necessary that we believe in ourselves, but always respecting others.
17. All the evidence we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume that in virtually all human beings, and almost all newborns, there is an active will, a drive toward health, growth and fulfillment.
People are active in our own self-development. For this reason, Maslow has influenced many coaching professionals.
18. Most of us could be better than we really are.
We have the ability to continually improve ourselves.
19. Life is a continuous process of choosing between safety and risk. Make the growth choice a dozen times a day
This phrase refers to the concept of comfort zone.
20. False optimism sooner or later means disappointment, hatred and hopelessness
Optimism must be authentic, otherwise it will end in frustration.
21. There is anthropological evidence indicating that the fundamental or ultimate desires of all human beings hardly differ from their everyday conscious desires. The main reason for this is that two different cultures can generate two totally different ways of satisfying a particular desire.
Desires are influenced by culture.
22. Self-realization means experiencing fully, vividly and selflessly, with total concentration and absorption. It means living without the shyness of the adolescent. At that moment, the person is totally and fully human. This is a moment of self-realization, the moment in which the self is actualized
There is a close relationship between the flow state and self-realization.
23. I have learned that the novice can often see things that the expert cannot. What is necessary is not to be afraid of making mistakes or appearing naive.
Fear is one of the limiting beliefs that affect our personal development.
24. People are not bad, they are unhappy
For Maslow, people are born with potential, but not everyone develops it.
25. The typical desire is clearly a need of the whole person
We all have desires in life that serve as motivation.
26. One’s only rival is one’s own potentialities. The only failure is failing to live within one’s own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and he must, therefore, be treated like a king.
When we set limits on ourselves, we are negatively affecting our personal development.
27. We must teach people to pay attention to their own tastes. Many don’t
Self-knowledge is one of the great virtues of the human being.
28. The satisfaction of one need creates another
Human beings want more and more. Once we have achieved one goal, we want another.
29. Something like human curiosity can be easily observed in higher animals
A phrase that invites free reflection.
30. We should renounce, once and for all, the attempt to prepare a meticulous inventory of impulses or needs. For different reasons, such an inventory is theoretically unconscious.
After all, needs come from within oneself.
31. If I was thrown out of a plane into an ocean and told that the nearest land was thousands of miles away, I would still swim. And I would despise anyone who gave up
A quote that expresses how Abraham Maslow thought.
32. The ability to be in the present moment is a main component of mental health
Currently, Teaching to live present is part of some third generation therapies
33. Self-realization is a continuous process. It means making one by one all the many decisions about whether to lie or be honest, whether to steal or not, at any given moment, and it means making each of those decisions as an option for growth. It is a movement towards self-realization
Maslow believes that self-actualization depends on ourselves. We are the ones who have to fight to achieve it.
34. In reality, self-actualized people, those who have reached a high level of maturity, health and self-satisfaction, have so much to teach us that, at times, they almost seem to belong to a different species of human beings.
Not everyone is able to overcome their limiting beliefs and go towards self-realization.
35. We would never want to compose music or create mathematical systems, or decorate our houses, or be well dressed, if our stomach were empty at all hours, or if we were continually dying of thirst.
For Maslow, the phases must be overcome one by one. You cannot think about self-actualization if we have not managed to satisfy our basic needs.
36. In short, the musician must play, the painter must paint and the poet must write, if they want to live at peace with themselves
Each of us has a path we must follow to achieve self-realization.
37. Independence from the environment achieves relative stability in the face of a hard blow, deprivation, hardships, frustrations and similar things. These people can maintain relative serenity in the midst of circumstances that could lead other people to suicide. They are also described as “self-sufficient.”
It is not easy to achieve what we want in life. You have to keep going even in bad times.
38. Children do not need to be taught to be curious
People, innately, are explorers.
39. If your only tool is a hammer, you tend to treat every problem as if it were a nail.
This phrase refers to mental flexibility when solving problems and adapting to the environment.
40. The most important problems of the greatest and best people in the history of humanity must be covered and explained
In Maslow’s book A multitude of characters appear that he uses as examples of successful people
41. If all needs are unsatisfied, and the organism is therefore dominated by physiological needs, the remaining needs may simply be non-existent or pushed to the background
The preference is always to satisfy lower order needs.
42. If you only have a hammer, you tend to see all problems as a nail.
It is more difficult to adapt to the environment with an inflexible mind.
43. We must immediately ensure that human motivation is rarely realized in behavior, except in relation to a situation and people.
Motivation is a psychological variable that is very present in our personal development.
44. What needs to change in a person is self-awareness
Trusting oneself is one of the best virtues to achieve what we want.
45. We fear our greatest possibilities. We are generally afraid of becoming what we envision in our best moments, in the most perfect conditions and with the greatest courage.
Another concept that arises from Maslow’s pyramid theory is the Jonah complex.
46. There are people who are afraid to bet on themselves
Some individuals have ways of thinking that limit their personal growth.
47. You will walk forward towards growth or you will walk backward towards security
Living in the comfort zone does not allow you to fully develop.
48. The fact is that people are good. Give people affection and security and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and behaviors.
For Maslow, people are born good but society corrupts them.
49. When people appear to be anything other than good and decent, it is only because they are reacting to stress or the deprivation of needs such as security, love, and self-esteem.
People are born good, but the situation makes them good or bad
50. As income increases, people actively desire and strive for things they would never have dreamed of a few years earlier.
When people meet the need for security, then they start thinking about other needs.
51. What a man can be, he must be. We call this need self-realization.
Maslow, in clear reference to the highest order needs
52. If you plan to be anything less than what you are capable of, you will probably be unhappy every day of your life.
True happiness is achieved only by satisfying the needs of self-actualization.
53. It is not normal to know what we want. It is a strange and difficult psychological achievement
Knowing what we want requires a great effort, because we have to take time to think about it.
54. Any worthwhile theory of motivation must address the superior capacities of the strong and healthy person, as well as the defensive maneuvers of paralyzed spirits.
Maslow is recognized as one of the great motivation theorists.
55. Studies of mentally healthy people indicate that, as a defining characteristic, they are attracted to the mysterious, the unknown, the chaotic, the disorganized, and the unexplained.
With his research, Maslow tried to extract the strengths of successful people.
56. Psychopathological effects when basic needs are frustrated are probably true.
Maslow thought that psychopathologies are associated with the achievement of needs.
57. The personality of the so-called psychopath is another example of the permanent loss of love needs. One way to understand this personality dysfunction is that people who lacked love in the first months of their lives have simply lost that desire forever, as well as the ability to give and receive affection.
He also thought that a large part of who we are is determined by the beliefs we acquire in childhood.
58. The need to know and understand is seen in early and second childhood, perhaps even more strongly than in adulthood
The early stages are the most important for our development.
59. The good society is one in which virtue is rewarded
Unfortunately, society does not always give us back everything we give it.
60. I wanted to show that human beings are capable of something more transcendent than war, prejudice and hatred. I wanted to get science to consider all the problems that laymen have handled: religion, poetry, values, philosophy, art. I continued with them trying to understand great people, the best specimens of humanity I could find.
Maslow tried to find the relationship between people who have been successful in this life.
61. Human beings need a framework of values and a philosophy of life
Existentialism greatly influenced Maslow’s humanist philosophy, as manifested in this phrase.
62. The best way to analyze a present problem is to give everything for it, study its nature and discover the answer to the problem within the problem itself
To overcome challenges you must first understand them.
63. Most people experience both tragedy and pleasure in varying proportions, and any philosophy that leaves out either cannot be considered complete.
The so-called “negative emotions” are also part of life.
64. Quitting smoking can be an excellent test of one’s character
Something as simple as quitting an unhealthy habit is a step towards personal development.
65. The ability to be in the present moment is the main component of mental well-being
This idea of being in the here and now is common to many other humanistic approaches.
66. In a way, each person is their own project
One of Maslow’s phrases in which he talks about the idea of personal development empowered by oneself.
67. The most beautiful destiny is to receive payment for doing what we are passionate about
Living doing what we love is a luxury.
68. One of the goals of education should be to teach that life is beautiful
Education should not simply consist of instruction.
69. Choosing the option of growth instead of fear twelve times a day is moving twelve times a day towards self-actualization
A metaphorical way of talking about personal growth.
70. The only happy people I know are those who work well at something they consider important.
Once again, Maslow talks about the union of work and pleasure.
71. Everything in life is education, and everyone is a teacher and at the same time a student
Life is constant progress without us ever stopping.
72. Creativity is a characteristic that is given to all of us at birth
Maslow talks about the innate character that he attributed to this mental capacity.
73. What is necessary to change a person is to change their idea of themselves
Our self-concept has a lot of power.
74. What is life for? life is for you
A simple and beautiful phrase about the meaning of life.
75. We are what we do and we do what we are
For Maslow there is no separation between theory and practice in one’s own personality.
