M. Scott Peck Quotes - Page 3

We cannot even let the other person into our hearts or minds unless we empty ourselves. We can truly listen to him or truly hear her only out of emptiness.

An unconscious, gentle process whereby people who want to be loving attempt to be so by telling little white lies, by withholding some of the truth about themselves and their feelings in order to avoid conflict. Pseudocommunity is conflict-avoiding; true community is conflict-resolving.

Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them?

God wants us to become himself or herself or itself. We are growing toward Godhood. God is the goal of evolution.

Whenever we think of ourselves as doing something for someone else, we are in some way denying our own responsibility. Whatever we do is done because we choose to do it, and we make that choice because it is the one that satisfies us the most.

Listen to your child enough and you will come to realize that he or she is quite an extraordinary individual. And the more extraordinary you realize your child to be the more you will be willing to listen. And the more you will learn.

The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own human nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world.

You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.

The key to community is the acceptance, in fact the celebration of our individual and cultural differences. It is also the key to world peace

Abandon the urge to simplify everything, to look for formulas and easy answers, and to begin to think multidimensionally, to glory in the mystery and paradoxes of life, not to be dismayed by the multitude of causes and consequences that are inherent in each experience -- to appreciate the fact that life is complex.

Everything that happens in life is there to aid our spiritual growth.

Children will, in my dream, be taught that laziness and narcissism are at the very root of human evil, and why this is so. . . . They will come to know that the natural tendency of the individual in a group is to forfeit his or her ethical judgment to the leader, and that this tendency should be resisted. And they will finally see it as each individual's responsibility to continually examine himself or herself for laziness and narcissism and then to purify themselves accordingly.

There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community.

When you consider yourself valuable you will take care of yourself in all ways that are necessary.

The difficulty we have in accepting responsibility for our behavior lies in the desire to avoid the pain of the consequences of that behavior.

True love is not a feeling by which we are overwhelmed. It is a committed, thoughtful decision.

When we love something it is of value to us, and when something is of value to us we spend time with it, time enjoying it and time taking care of it.

To heal your body, you must first heal your spirit.

Going into the unknown is invariably frightening, but we learn what is significantly new only through adventures.

A life of total dedication to the truth also means a life of willingness to be personally challenged.

A discussion becomes destructive when it begins to generate more heat than light.

If you are determined not to risk pain, then you must do without many things: having children, getting married, the ecstasy of sex, the hope of ambition, friendship-all that makes life alive, meaningful and significant.

America's greatest sin is the refusal to delay gratification.

In and through community lies the salvation of the world.

The time and the quality of the time that their parents devote to them indicate to children the degree to which they are valued by their parents. . . . When children know that they are valued, when they truly feel valued in the deepest parts of themselves, then they feel valuable. This knowledge is worth more than any gold.