M. Scott Peck Quotes

“Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.”

“We must be willing to fail and to appreciate the truth that often "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived."”

“Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.”

“Spiritually evolved people, by virtue of their discipline, mastery and love, are people of extraordinary competence, and in their competence they are called on to serve the world, and in their love they answer the call.”

“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.”

“Once we truly know that life is difficult — once we truly understand and accept it — then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

“All my life I used to wonder what I would become when I grew up. Then, about seven years ago, I realized that I was never going to grow up--that growing is an ever ongoing process.”

“Move out or grow in any dimension and pain as well as joy will be your reward. A full life will be full of pain.”

“We cannot solve life's problems except by solving them.”

“There is no worse bitterness than to reach the end of your life and realized you have not lived.”

“When we love someone our love becomes demonstrable or real only through our exertion - through the fact that for that someone (or for ourself) we take an extra step or walk an extra mile. Love is not effortless. To the contrary, love is effortful.”

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

“Love always requires courage and involves risk.”

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

“The overall purpose of human communication is - or should be - reconciliation. It should ultimately serve to lower or remove the walls of misunderstanding which unduly separate us human beings, one from another.”

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

“It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually.”

“Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity.”

“Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit.”

“Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and wisdom.”

“When we teach ourselves and our children discipline, we are teaching them and ourselves how to suffer and also how to grow.”

“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.”