Carl Rogers quotes

The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination. (Carl Rogers)
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
Carl Rogers
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?
Carl Rogers
The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.
Carl Rogers
The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.
Carl Rogers
What I am is good enough if I would only be it openly.
Carl Rogers
There is in every organism, at whatever level, an underlying flow of movement toward constructive fulfillment of its inherent possibilities.
Carl Rogers
If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.
Carl Rogers
Allowance of the freedom of choices in direction, either for the group or individuals particularly in the near future.
Carl Rogers
It is the client who knows what hurts, what directions to go, what problems are crucial, what experiences have been deeply buried.
Carl Rogers
People are just as wonderful as sunsets if I can 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. (Carl Rogers)
Don't be the ammunition wagon, be the rifle ... knowledge exists primarily for use.
Carl Rogers
Openness to all attitudes no matter how extreme or unrealistic they may seem.
Carl Rogers
what is most personal is most universal.
Carl Rogers
The degree to which I can create relationships, which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons, is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself.
Carl Rogers
Am I living in a way which is deeply satisfying to me, and which truly expresses me?
Carl Rogers
The facts are always friendly, every bit of evidence one can acquire, in any area, leads one that much closer to what is true.
Carl Rogers
Acceptance of the problems experienced by the group where they are clearly defined as issues.
Carl Rogers
There is direction but there is no destination.
Carl Rogers
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.
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. My experience is not authoritative because it is infallible. It is the basis of authority because it can always be checked in new primary ways. In this way its frequent error or fallibility is always open to correction. (Carl Rogers)
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.
Carl Rogers
Managers today come up against a few more communication barriers. One is the pressure of time. Listening carefully takes time, and managers have little of that to spare. In today's business culture especially, with its emphasis on speed, already pressed managers may give short shrift to the slower art of one-on-one communication.
Carl Rogers
I have gradually come to one negative conclusion about the good life. It seems to me that the good life is not any fixed state. It is not, in my estimation, a state of virtue, or contentment, or nirvana, or happiness. It is not a condition in which the individual is adjusted or fulfilled or actualized. To use psychological terms, it is not a state of drive-reduction, or tension-reduction, or homeostasis.
Carl Rogers
Facilitative attitudes (and skills) can help a therapist gain entry into the group.
Carl Rogers