Carl Rogers > Quotes

“I have come to realize that being trustworthy does not demand that I be rigidly consistent but that I be dependably real.”
― Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person

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

“Hearing has consequences. When I truly hear a person and the meanings that are important to him at that moment, hearing not simply his words, but him, and when I let him know that I have heard his own private personal meanings, many things happen. There is first of all a grateful look. He feels released. He wants to tell me more about his world. He surges forth in a new sense of freedom. He becomes more open to the process of change. I have often noticed that the more deeply I hear the meanings of the person, the more there is that happens. Almost always, when a person realize 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.”
― Carl Rogers

“Life, at its best, is a flowing, changing process in which nothing is fixed.”
― Carl Rogers

“La curiosa paradoja es que cuando me acepto tal como soy, entonces puedo cambiar”
― Carl Rogers

“Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience. It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming in me. Neither the Bible nor the prophets — neither Freud nor research — neither the revelations of God nor man — can take precedence over my own direct experience.”
― Carl Rogers

“Although the client-centered approach had its origin purely within the limits of the psychological clinic, it is proving to have implications, often of a startling nature, for very diverse fields of effort.”
― Carl Rogers, Significant Aspects of Client-Centered Therapy

“Don't be a damned ammunition wagon. Be a rifle!”
― Carl Rogers

“If it is possible genuinely to meet and discover each other as persons, actually to empathize with and understand both the cultural beliefs and political views of each other –then I think the obscured future may be penetrated with some clear rays of light that we may realistically hope for a better world.”
― Carl Rogers

“The most valuable information on how to maintain or save relationships comes from scientific observation of couples in action, right down to the microexpressions and apparently inane comments seen in everyday conversations.”
― Carl Rogers

“It’s an awfully risky thing to live”
― Carl Rogers

“In his attempt to discover own self, the client typically uses the relationship to explore, to examine the various aspects of his own experience, to recognize and face up to the deep contradictions which he often discovers. He learns how much of his behavior, even how much of the feeling he experiences, is not real, is not something which flows from the genuine reactions of his organism but is a facade, a front, behind which he has been hiding. He discovers how much of his life is guided by what he thinks he should be, not by what he is. Often he discovers that he exists only in response to the demands of others, that he seems to have no self of his own, that he is only trying to think, and feel, and behave in the way that others believe he ought to think, and feel and behave.
In this connection I have been astonished to find how accurately the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, pictured the dilemma of the individual more than a century ago, with keen psychological insight. He points out that the most common despair is to be in despair at not choosing, or willing, to be oneself; but that the deepest form of despair is to choose "to be another than himself." On the other hand "to will to be that self which one truly is, is indeed the opposite of despair," and this choice is the deepest responsibility of man. As I read some of his writings I almost feel that he must have listened in on the statements made by our clients as they search and explore for the reality of self--often a painful and troubling search.
This exploration becomes even more disturbing when they find themselves involved in removing the false faces which they had not known were false face. They begin to engage in the frightening task of exploring the turbulent and sometimes violent feelings within themselves. To remove a mask which you had thought was part of your real self can be a deeply disturbing experience, yet when there is freedom to think and feel and be, the individual moves toward such a goal.”
― Carl Rogers

“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.”
― Carl Rogers

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself, just as I am, then I can change.”
― Carl Rogers

“His experiencing is process in nature, feeling the new in each situation and interpreting it anew, interpreting it in terms of the past only to the extent that the now is identical with the past.”
― Carl Rogers

“Real communication occurs...when we listen with understanding. What does this mean? It means to see the expressed idea and attitude from the other person's point of view, to sense how it feels to him, to achieve his frame of reference in regard to the thing he is talking about.”
― Carl Rogers

“Life vividly reveals itself in the therapeutic process—with its blind power and its tremendous capacity for destruction, but with its overbalancing thrust toward growth, if the opportunity for growth is provided.”
― Carl Rogers, Becoming a Person

“He stressed the futility of an encyclopedic knowledge for its own sake, and wound up with the injunction,
“Don’t be a damned ammunition wagon; be a rifle!”
― Carl Rogers, Becoming a Person

“No one learns significantly from conclusions.”
― Carl Rogers, Becoming a Person

“He stressed the futility of an encyclopedic knowledge for its own sake, and wound up with the injunction,
“Don’t be a damned ammunition wagon; be a rifle!”
― Carl Rogers, Becoming a Person

“I believe that too few people are aware of the extent, the breadth, and the depth of the advances which have been made in recent decades in the behavioral sciences…the increasing power for control which it gives will be held by some one or some group; such an individual or group will surely choose the purposes or goals to be achieved; and most of us will then be increasingly controlled by means so subtle we will not even be aware of them as controls…it appears that some form of completely controlled society…is coming.”
― Carl Rogers

“I have lots of quotes to add; here's one:

"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".”
― Carl Rogers, Becoming a Person

“Therapy is not a matter of doing something to the individual, or of inducing him to do something about himself. It is instead a matter of freeing him for normal growth and development, of removing obstacles so that he can again move forward.”
― Carl Rogers

“Let me see if I can sum up very briefly the picture of the impact of the behavioral sciences upon the individual and upon society, as this impact is seen by Dr. Skinner, and implied in the attitudes and work of many, perhaps most, behavioral scientists. Behavioral science is clearly moving forward; the increasing power for control which it gives will be held by some one or some group; such an individual or group will surely choose the purposes or goals to be achieved; and most of us will then be increasingly controlled by means so subtle we will not even be aware of them as controls. Thus whether a council of wise psychologists (if this is not a contradiction in terms) or a Stalin or a Big Brother has the power, and whether the goal is happiness, or productivity, or resolution of the Oedipus complex, or submission, or love of Big Brother, we will inevitably find ourselves moving toward the chosen goal, and probably thinking that we ourselves desire it. Thus if this line of reasoning is correct, it appears that some form of completely controlled society - a Walden Two or a 1984 - is coming. The fact that it would surely arrive piecemeal rather than all at once, does not greatly change the fundamental issues. Man and his behavior would become a planned product of society.”
― Carl Rogers

“I have endeavored, up to this point, to give an objective picture of some of the developments in the behavioral sciences, and an objective picture of the kind of society which might emerge out of these developments. I do however have strong personal reactions to the kind of world I have been describing, a world which Skinner explicitly (and many other scientists implicitly) expect and hope in the future. To me this kind of world would destroy the human person . . .”
― Carl Rogers

“There is another peculiar satisfaction in really hearing someone: It is like listening to the music of the spheres, because beyond the immediate message of the person, no matter what that might be, there is the universal. Hidden in all of the personal communications, which I really hear there seem to be orderly psychological laws, aspects of the same order we find in the universe as a whole. So there is both the satisfaction of hearing this person and also the satisfaction of feeling one’s self in touch with what is universally true.”
― Carl Rogers

“I have endeavored, up to this point, to give an objective picture of some of the developments in the behavioral sciences, and an objective picture of the kind of society which might emerge out of these developments. I do however have strong personal reactions to the kind of world I have been describing, a world which Skinner explicitly (and many other scientists implicitly) expect and hope in the future. To me this kind of world would destroy the human person . . .

I feel that to the limit of my ability I have played my part in advancing the behavioral sciences, but if the result of my efforts and those of others is that man becomes a robot, created and controlled by a science of his own making, then I am very happy indeed.”
― Carl Rogers

“In my relationships with persons I have found that it does not help, in the long run, to act as though I were something that I am not.”
― Carl Rogers, Becoming a Person

“What I will be in the next moment, and what I will do, grows out of the moment, and cannot be predicted.”
― Carl Rogers

“My psychoanalyst friend, Paul Bergman, wrote that no person has more than one seminal idea in his or her lifetime; all writings by that person are simply further explications of that one theme. I agree. I think this describes my products.”
― Carl Rogers