The study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy
Interpretation
Studying flawed or limited examples leads to flawed thinking and understanding.
Abraham Maslow's quote highlights the importance of studying healthy and mature examples to foster a robust psychology and philosophy. When we focus on and analyze only those who are crippled or stunted in their development, our understanding, beliefs, and overall philosophy are limited and weakened, reinforcing a cycle of mediocrity and limiting potential growth.
In practice
This quote can be used in a psychology class to emphasize the importance of studying healthy individuals.
It looks as if there were a single ultimate goal for mankind, a far goal toward which all persons strive. This is called variously by different authors self-actualization, self-realization, integration, psychological health, individuation, autonomy, creativity, productivity, but they all agree that this amounts to realizing the potentialities of the person, that is to say, becoming fully human, everything that person can be.
Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.
Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.
It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually.
I was awfully curious to find out why I didn't go insane.
Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self actualization and the love for the highest values.
I must have been one of the least surprised people on earth on September 11. I felt very braced for that. I knew something like that was going to come.
How do you know that you are not part of a book? That someone's not reading your story right now?
Our lack of forgiveness makes us hate, and our lack of compassion makes us hard-hearted. Pride in our hearts makes us resentful and keeps our memory in a constant whirlwind of passion and self-pity.
When people are not in the moment, they're not there to know that they're not there.
For at least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols
There is a world inside the world.
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