M. Scott Peck citations

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Share our similarities, celebrate our differences.”

“Human beings are poor examiners, subject to superstition, bias, prejudice, and a PROFOUND tendency to see what they want to see rather than what is really there.”

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

“I define love thus: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Life is difficult.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Love always requires courage and involves risk.”

“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.”