Quotes

I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.

I learned a great many years ago that in a fight between husband and wife, a third party should never get between the woman's skillet and the man's ax-helve.

I am like a man so busy in letting rooms in one end of his house, that he can't stop to put out the fire that is burning the other.

Being elected to Congress, though I am very grateful to our friends for having done it, has not pleased me as much as I expected.

I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.

I have said a hundred times, and I have no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States to enter into the slave States, and to interfere with the question of slavery at all. I have said that always.

That our government should have been maintained in its original form from its establishment until now is not much to be wondered at. It had many props to support it through that period, which now are decayed and crumbled away. Through that period, it was felt by all to be an undecided experiment; now, it is understood to be a successful one.

Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States - old as well as new - North as well as South.

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

What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.

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

With a tree, all the growth takes place at the growing tips. Humanity is exactly the same. All the growth takes place in the growing tip: among that one percent of the population. It's made up of pioneers, the beginners. That's where the action is.

The fact is that people are good, Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.

The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side... It has revealed to us much about man's shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his psychological health.

Work is that which you dislike doing but perform for the sake of external rewards. At school, this takes the form of grades. In society, it means money, status, privilege.

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

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

Education can become a self-fulfilling activity, liberating in and of itself.

One's only rival is one's own potentialities. One's only failure is failing to live up to one's own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king.

The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.

It is as necessary for man to live in beauty rather than ugliness as it is necessary for him to have food for an aching belly or rest for a weary body.

Being a full human being is difficult, frightening, and problematical.