Carl Rogers Quotes

People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don't find myself saying, "Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner." I don't try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.

We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know.

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.

Growth occurs when individuals confront problems, struggle to master them, and through that struggle develop new aspects of their skills, capacities, views about life.

As no one else can know how we perceive, we are the best experts on ourselves.

When the other person is hurting, confused, troubled, anxious, alienated, terrified; or when he or she is doubtful of self-worth, uncertain as to identity, then understanding is called for. The gentle and sensitive companionship of an empathic stance… provides illumination and healing. In such situations deep understanding is, I believe, the most precious gift one can give to another.

A person cannot teach another person directly; a person can only facilitate another's learning

People only seriously consider change when they feel accepted for exactly who they are.

When someone really hears you without passing judgment on you, without trying to take responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it feels damn good. . . . When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements which seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens. How confusions which seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard.

The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.

In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?

The only person who cannot be helped is that person who blames others.

What you are to be, you are now becoming.

The way of being with another person which is termed empathic...means temporarily living in their life, moving abut in it delicately without making judgment... to be with another in this way means that for the time being you lay aside the views and values you hold for yourself in order to enter the other's world without prejudice...a complex, demanding, strong yet subtle and gentle way of being.

We cannot change, we cannot move away from what we are, until we thoroughly accept what we are. Then change seems to come about almost unnoticed.

Life, at its best, is a flowing, changing process in which nothing is fixed.

I realize that if I were stable, prudent and static; I'd live in death. Therefore I accept confusion, uncertainty, fear and emotional ups and downs; because that's the price I'm willing to pay for a fluid, perplexed and exciting life.

It is the client who knows what hurts, what directions to go, what problems are crucial, what experiences have been deeply buried.

It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens.

This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-hearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one's potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life.

True empathy is always free of any evaluative or diagnostic quality. This comes across to the recipient with some surprise. "If I am not being judged, perhaps I am not so evil or abnormal as I have thought".

Life is about Being & Becoming.

Man's inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively.

The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.

When a person realizes he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying, "Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it's like to be me".