Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Abraham Harold Maslow

American Psychologist, Philosopher, Professor of Psychology at Brandeis University, Founded Humanistic Psychology and Created Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself."

"When the only tool you have is a hammer you tend to see every problem as a nail."

"The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness."

"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."

"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."

"If we want to know the possibilities for spiritual growth, value growth, or moral development in human beings, then I maintain that we can learn most by studying our most moral, ethical, or saintly people."

"Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What humans can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature."

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

"Human life will never be understood unless its highest aspirations are taken into account. Growth, self-actualization, the striving toward health, the quest for identity and autonomy, the yearning for excellence (and other ways of striving "upward") must now be accepted beyond question as a widespread and perhaps universal tendency."

"In the highest love between man and woman, or parent and child, as the person reaches the ultimates of strength, self-esteem, or individuality, so also does he simultaneously merge with the other, lose self-consciousness, and more or less transcend selfishness. The same can happen in the creative moment, in the profound aesthetic experience, in the insight experience…and others which I have generalized as peak experiences."

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

"What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself."

"The human being is so constructed that he pressed toward fuller and fuller being and this means pressing toward what most people would call good values, toward serenity, kindness, courage, honesty, love, unselfishness, and goodness."