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."

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.

Every person is, in part, 'his own project' and makes himself.

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.

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

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.

Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.