These self actualization quotes will inspire you. Self-actualization, in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, is the highest level of psychological development, where the personal potential is fully realized after basic bodily and ego needs have been fulfilled.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging self actualization quotes, self actualization sayings, and self actualization proverbs.
Famous Self Actualization Quotes
- “The purpose of life is to know yourself, create yourself, experience yourself as Who You Really Are. There is no other reason to do anything.” ~ Neale Donald Walsch
- “Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What human beings can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature. This need we may call self-actualization.” ~ Abraham Maslow
- “I think we all carry within us different versions of ourselves. Our true, greatest, most honest versions of ourselves can either be developed and nourished, or it can remain dead from neglect. Most people opt for the easiest version rather than the best.
But in the end which version lives, which version thrives and which version dies, depends on the choices we make and the people in our lives.” ~ Yasmin Mogahed -
“Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.” ~ Rumi
- “Finding happiness is like finding yourself. You don’t find happiness, you make happiness. You choose happiness. Self-actualization is a process of discovering who you are, who you want to be and paving the way to happiness by doing what brings you the most meaning and contentment to your life over the long run.” ~ David Leonhardt
- “No matter who you are, no matter what you did, no matter where you’ve come from, you can always change, become a better version of yourself.” ~ Madonna Ciccone
- “Many people dedicate their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like, rather than actualizing themselves. This difference between self-actualization and self-image actualization is very important. Most people live only for their image” ~ Bruce Lee
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“When people appear to be something other than good and decent, it is only because they are reacting to stress, pain, or the deprivation of basic human needs such as security, love, and self-esteem.” ~ Abraham Maslow
- “Self actualization is the oxygen for the soul.” ~ Brian Johnson
- “Life, too, is senseless unless you know who you are, what you want, and which way the wind blows.” ~ Ellen Raskin
- “Those who improve with age embrace the power of personal growth and personal achievement and begin to replace youth with wisdom, innocence with understanding, and lack of purpose with self-actualization.” ~ Robert Foster Bennett
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“I was a late bloomer. But anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky.” ~ Sharon Olds
- “I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.” ~ Bruce Lee
- “Self-actualization cannot be attained if it is made an end in itself, but only as a side effect of self-transcendence.” ~ Viktor E. Frankl
- “Go toward self-actualization rather than self-image actualization… Search within… for honest self- expression.” ~ Bruce Lee
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“Your playing small does not serve the world. Who are you not to be great?” ~ Marianne Williamson
- “In life, you don’t get instant satisfaction. In life, you get to slog. You work. You grow. You take the long view. You fill the void with self-actualization.” ~ Amy Dickinson
- “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, an poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This weed we call self-actualization….It refers to man’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely to the tendency for him to become actually in what he is potentially: to become everything one is capable of becoming.” ~ Abraham Maslow
- “There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” ~ Nelson Mandela
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“Live life as though nobody is watching, and express yourself as though everyone is listening.” ~ Nelson Mandela
- “If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living… Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.” ~ Joseph Campbell
- “It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.” ~ Nelson Mandela
- “It looks as if there were a single ultimate goal for mankind, a far goal toward which all persons strive. This is called variously by different authors self-actualization, self-realization, integration, psychological health, individuation, autonomy, creativity, productivity, but they all agree that this amounts to realizing the potentialities of the person, that is to say, becoming fully human, everything that person can be.” ~ Abraham Maslow
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“Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us.” ~ Rollo May
- “Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self actualization and the love for the highest values.” ~ Abraham Maslow
- “It is not where you start but how high you aim that matters for success.” ~ Nelson Mandela
- “You don’t find happiness, you make happiness.” ~ David Leonhardt
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“What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.” ~ Abraham Maslow
- “(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.” ~ Abraham Maslow
- “Housework is work directly opposed to the possibility of human self-actualization.” ~ Ann Oakley
- “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.” ~ Abraham Maslow
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“I have retired, but if there’s anything that would kill me it is to wake up in the morning not knowing what to do.” ~ Nelson Mandela
- “The person in peak-experiences feels himself, more than other times, to be the responsible, active, creating center of his activities and of his perceptions. He feels more like a prime-mover, more self-determined (rather than caused, determined, helpless, dependent, passive, weak, bossed). He feels himself to be his own boss, fully responsible, fully volitional, with more “free-will” than at other times, master of his fate, an agent.” ~ Abraham Maslow
- “A tenacious grip on our own ideals, irrespective of hurdles, would propel us towards self-actualization!” ~ Deeba
- “To try deliberately for self-actualization is like trying very hard to fall asleep or to have a good time.” ~ Cornelius Plantinga
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“The more one forgives himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.” ~ Viktor E. Frankl
- “Do your own thing on your own terms and get what you came here for.” ~ Oliver James
- “…being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself…. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.” ~ Viktor E. Frankl
- “To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.” ~ Albert Camus
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“To achieve self-actualization, do good things for other people that you would want to be done onto yourself” ~ Meg Cabot
- “I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.” ~ Nelson Mandela
- “We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?” ~ Marianne Williamson
- “Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and door will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.” ~ Joseph Campbell
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“I taught myself to write in order to understand who I was and so yes, writing was an act of self-actualization in the beginning.” ~ Danielle Trussoni
- “Concepts vs. self-actualization. – Instead of dedicating your life to actualize a concept of what you should be like, ACTUALIZE YOURSELF. The process of maturing does not mean to become a captive of conceptualization. It is to come to the realization of what lies in our innermost selves.” ~ Bruce Lee
- “If you follow your bliss…the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.” ~ Joseph Campbell
- “It was psychobabbler Abraham Maslow who wrote of the phenomena of self-actualization. What Maslow failed to grasp is that reaching true self-actualization can only be ultimately achieved when you have your own brand of ammunition.” ~ Ted Nugent
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“Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable.” ~ Rollo May
- “Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all. Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves.” ~ Nelson Mandela
- “Parents who engage in this kind of [conscious] parenting understand the power of being present being mindful to take the time to build connection understanding that this foundation is the bedrock of all later self-worth, self-esteem and self-actualization.” ~ Shefali Tsabary
- “Self-actualization is what educated existence is all about. For members of the educated class, life is one long graduate school. When they die, God meets them at the gates of heaven, totes up how many fields of self-expression they have mastered, and then hands them a divine diploma and lets them in.” ~ David Brooks
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“My mom says you only need three people you can rely on to achieve self-actualization.” ~ Cassandra Clare
- “I never liked the philosophy that you can have everything and be everything and that something is wrong if you don’t want that. I’m terrible at multitasking and find it hard to believe that no one protests this general trend of using the rhetoric of self actualization to sell you faster and faster phones and computers, BlackBerrys, etc.” ~ Elaine Equi
- “I was awfully curious to find out why I didn’t go insane.” ~ Abraham Maslow
- “Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us. Like a chemical mixture, if one of us is changed, both of us will be. Will we grow in self-actualization, or will it destroy us? The one thing we can be certain of is that if we let ourselves fully into the relationship for good or evil, we will not come out unaffected.” ~ Rollo May
