M. Scott Peck Quotes - Page 6

I've had all kinds of experiences with God in terms of revelation through a still, small voice or dreams or coincidences.

To be free people we must assume total responsibility for ourselves, but in doing so must possess the capacity to reject responsibility that is not truly ours. To be organized and efficient, to live wisely, we must daily delay gratification and keep an eye on the future; yet to live joyously we must also possess the capacity, when it is not destructive, to live in the present and act spontaneously. In other words, discipline itself must be disciplined. The type of discipline required to discipline discipline is what I call balancing.

An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one's own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker's world from the inside, step in inside his or her shoes.

If we know exactly where we're going, exactly how to get there, and exactly what we'll see along the way, we won't learn anything.

But I already saw no great difference between the psyche and spirituality. To amass knowledge without becoming wise is not my idea of progress in therapy.

Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others.

The denial of suffering is, in fact a better definition of illness than its acceptance.

Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems ... create our courage and wisdom.

Sickness begets chaos, which, through hard work and a touch of grace, leads to growth and resurrection.

Not only do self-love and love of others go hand in hand but ultimately they are indistinguishable.

If we deny our anger, our pain, our ambition, or our goodness, we will suffer.

Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know how to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost.

Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional.

I make no distinction between the mind and the spirit, and therefore no distinction between the process of achieving spiritual growth and achieving mental growth. They are one and the same.

Good discipline requires time. When we have no time to give our children, or no time that we are willing to give, we don't even observe them closely enough to become aware of when their need for our disciplinary assistance is expressed subtley.

It is not easy for us to change. But it is possible and it is our glory as human beings

Let me simply state that it is wrong to regard any other human being, a priori, as an object, or an 'It.' This is so because each and every human being - you, every friend, every stranger, every foreigner - is precious.

I can remember years ago sitting on my bed and suddenly thinking, "I am God."

The feeling of being valuable - 'I am a valuable person'- is essential to mental health and is a cornerstone of self-discipline.

Community is another such phenomenon. Like electricity, it is profoundly lawful. Yet there remains something about it that is inherently mysterious, miraculous, unfathomable. Thus there is no adequate one-sentence definition of genuine community. Community is something more than the sum of its parts, its individual members. What is this "something more?" Even to begin to answer that, we enter a realm that is not so much abstract as almost mystical. It is a realm where words are never fully suitable and language itself falls short.

Ultimately love is everything.

Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience.

There is no virtue inherent in un-constructive suffering.

The only real security in life lies in relishing life's insecurity.

We know a great deal more about the causes of physical disease than we do about the causes of physical health.