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 the motivation directed towards the objective of covering certain needs.

At the highest level of this pyramid are the needs of self-realization, which are internal needs, of a spiritual, moral or mission-driven nature

  • To learn more, we invite you to read our article: “Abraham Maslow’s Personality Theory”

Abraham Maslow’s Best Quotes

Throughout his life, Maslow gave several full quotes that exemplify his theory.

In this article, we have compiled the best phrases, famous quotes and reflections of Abraham Maslow .

1. Self-realized people have a deep sense of identification, sympathy and affection for human beings in general. They feel kinship and connection, as if all people are members of their family

When we feel self-fulfilled, we will feel good and have a higher self-esteem. This, in turn, will have an impact on 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 he really loves to make sense of his life.

3. Be independent of other people’s good opinions

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 twelve times a day towards self-realization

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, to create it, to 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 call 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 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 go towards safety 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 listen to the introjected voices of mom, dad, the system, the elders, authority or tradition

Culture and environment affect how we think. Many times, we don’t let people hear what we want to say to ourselves.

10. In certain definable and empirical ways, man needs to live in beauty rather than 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-fulfilling and fully human person are increasingly close to each other and may 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, to 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 ends, desires or ultimate needs of the human being

Maslow brought a great deal of knowledge to the theories of motivation.

15. We could define therapy as a search for value

Humanistic therapy starts from 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 one has only arrogance without humility, then one is paranoid. We must be aware not only of the divine possibilities in us, but also of the existential human limitations

We must believe in ourselves, but always respect 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 their own self-development. That is why 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 choice to grow a dozen times a day

This sentence refers to the concept of the comfort zone.

20. False optimism sooner or later means disappointment, hatred, and hopelessness

Optimism must be genuine, otherwise it will end in frustration.

21. Anthropological evidence indicates that the fundamental or ultimate desires of all human beings differ little 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 to live fully, vividly and unselfishly, with total concentration and absorption. It means living without the shyness of the adolescent. In that moment, the person is totally and fully human. This is a moment of self-realization, the moment in which the self is updated

There is a close relationship between the flow state and self-realization.

23. I’ve learned that the novice can often see things the expert can’t. The necessary thing 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 our motivation.

26. One’s only rival is one’s own potential. The only failure is failure to live up to one’s possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and should therefore be treated as a king

When we set limits for ourselves, we are negatively affecting our personal development.

27. We must teach people to pay attention to their own tastes. Many do not

Self-knowledge is one of the great virtues of the human being.

28. The satisfaction of one need creates another

We humans want more and more. Once we have achieved one goal, we want another.

29. Something like human curiosity can easily be observed in higher animals

A sentence that invites free reflection.

30. We should renounce, once and for all, the pretense of drawing up a detailed inventory of impulses or needs. For various reasons, such an inventory is theoretically unconscious

After all, needs come from within oneself.

31. If I were 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 surrendered

A quote that expresses how Abraham Maslow thought.

32. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental health

Nowadays, teaching to live in the 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 a given time, and it means making each of those decisions as a growth option. It is a movement toward self-realization

Maslow believes that self-realization depends on ourselves. We are the ones who have to fight to achieve it.

34. In reality, self-realized people, those who have reached a high level of maturity, health and self-satisfaction, have so much to teach us that sometimes they almost seem to belong to a different species of human being

Not everyone is able to overcome their limiting beliefs and move 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 was empty all the time, or if we were continually dying of thirst

For Maslow, the phases have to be overcome one by one. We cannot think of self-realization 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 in peace with themselves

Each one of us has a path to follow to achieve self-realization.

37. Independence from the environment achieves relative stability in the face of a hard blow, hardships, sticks, frustrations and the like. These people can maintain relative serenity in the midst of circumstances that might lead others to suicide. They are also described as “self-sufficient”

It’s 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, innate to us, 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 in solving problems and adapting to the environment.

40. The most important problems of the greatest and best characters in human history should be covered and explained

In Maslow’s book there are many characters that he uses as examples of successful people .

41. If all needs are unmet, and the organism is therefore dominated by physiological needs, the remaining needs may simply be non-existent or displaced to the background

The preference is always to satisfy lower order needs.

42. If you only have one hammer, you tend to see all problems as nails

It is harder to adapt to the environment with an inflexible mind.

43. We must immediately ensure that human motivation is rarely realized in behavior, if not in relation to a situation and a person

Motivation is a psychological variable that is very present in our personal development.

44. What needs to change in a person is self-awareness

Self-confidence is one of the best virtues to achieve what we want.

45. We are afraid of our maximum possibilities. We are usually afraid of becoming what we envision in our best moments, in the most perfect and courageous conditions

Another concept that emerges from Maslow’s pyramid theory is the Jonah complex.

46. Some people are afraid to bet on themselves

Some individuals have ways of thinking that limit their personal growth.

47. You will walk forward to growth or walk backward to safety

Living in the comfort zone does not allow you to fully develop.

48. The fact is, 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 seem to be anything other than good and decent, it is only because they are reacting to stress or 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 desire and actively strive for things they never would have dreamed of a few years earlier

When people meet the need for security, then they begin to think about other needs.

51. What a man can be, he must be. We call this necessity self-realization

Maslow, in clear reference to the needs of maximum order

52. If you plan to be something less than 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-realization.

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 deal of effort, because we have to take time to think about it

54. Any worthwhile theory of motivation must address the superior abilities 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 are probably true when basic needs are frustrated

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 the need for love. One way of understanding 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 much of who we are is determined by the beliefs we acquired in childhood.

58. The need to know and understand is seen in early and middle 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 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 make science consider all the problems that the profane have dealt with: religion, poetry, values, philosophy, art. I continued with them trying to understand the great people, the best specimens of humanity I could find

Maslow tried to find the relationship between people who have succeeded in this life.

61. The human being needs a framework of values and a philosophy of life

Existentialism greatly influenced Maslow’s humanistic philosophy, as is 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 one of the two cannot be considered complete

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 stopping 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 humanist approaches.

66. In a way, each person is his or her own project

One of Maslow’s phrases in which he talks about the idea of self-empowerment .

67. The most beautiful destiny is to receive payment for doing what we love

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. To choose the option of growth instead of fear twelve times a day is to move 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 a student at the same time

Life is constant progress without ever stopping.

72. Creativity is a characteristic that is given to all of us at birth

Maslow talks about the innate character he attributed to this mental capacity.

73. What is necessary to change a person is to change his idea of himself

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 personality.