(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.

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.

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.

Man is a perpetually wanting animal.

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

Boys will be boys as long as there are no girls in the picture.

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.