M. Scott Peck Quotes

94 Sourced Quotes

Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know how to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost.

M. Scott Peck
The denial of suffering is, in fact a better definition of illness than its acceptance.

M. Scott Peck
If you are determined not to risk pain, then you must do without many things: having children, getting married, the ecstasy of sex, the hope of ambition, friendship-all that makes life alive, meaningful and significant.

M. Scott Peck
What people get admired and appreciated for in community are their soft skills: their sense of humor and timing, their ability to listen, their courage and honesty, their capacity for empathy.

M. Scott Peck
Examination of the world without is never as personally painful as examination of the world within.

M. Scott Peck
Genuine love not only respects the individuality of the other but actually cultivates it, even at the risk of separation or loss. The ultimate goal of life remains the spiritual growth of the individual, the solitary journey to peaks that can be climbed only alone.

M. Scott Peck
By attempting to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we are giving away our power to some other individual or organization. In this way, millions daily attempt to escape from freedom.

M. Scott Peck
If we seek to be loved - if we expect to be loved - this cannot be accomplished; we will be dependent and grasping not genuinely loving.

M. Scott Peck
I make no distinction between the mind and the spirit, and therefore no distinction between the process of achieving spiritual growth and achieving mental growth. They are one and the same.

M. Scott Peck
We know a great deal more about the causes of physical disease than we do about the causes of physical health.

M. Scott Peck
True love is not a feeling by which we are overwhelmed. It is a committed, thoughtful decision.

M. Scott Peck
Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life's problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems.

M. Scott Peck
The will to grow is, in essence, the same phenomenon as love. Genuinely loving people are, by definition, growing people.

M. Scott Peck
Listen to your child enough and you will come to realize that he or she is quite an extraordinary individual. And the more extraordinary you realize your child to be the more you will be willing to listen. And the more you will learn.

M. Scott Peck
Consciousness is the foundation of all thinking; and thinking is the foundation of all consciousness.

M. Scott Peck
The best decision-makers are those who are willing to suffer the most over their decisions but still retain their ability to be decisive.

M. Scott Peck
Community is and must be inclusive. The great enemy of community is exclusivity. Groups that exclude others because they are poor or doubters or divorced or sinners or of some different race or nationality are not communities; they are cliques--actually defensive bastions against community.

M. Scott Peck
An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one's own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker's world from the inside, step in inside his or her shoes.

M. Scott Peck
When we teach ourselves and our children discipline, we are teaching them and ourselves how to suffer and also how to grow.

M. Scott Peck
Falling in love is not an extension of one's limits or boundaries; it is a partial and temporary collapse of them.

M. Scott Peck
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.

M. Scott Peck
The only real security in life lies in relishing life's insecurity.

M. Scott Peck
When we cling, often forever, to our old patterns of thinking and behaving, we fall to negotiate any crisis, to truly grow up, and to experience the joyful sense of rebirth that accompanies the successful transition into greater maturity.

M. Scott Peck
How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded! Community requires the ability to expose our wounds and weaknesses to our fellow creatures. It also requires the ability to be affected by the wounds of others... But even more important is the love that arises among us when we share, both ways, our woundedness.

M. Scott Peck
When we love something it is of value to us, and when something is of value to us we spend time with it, time enjoying it and time taking care of it....

M. Scott Peck
Nirvana or lasting enlightenment or true spiritual growth can be achieved only through persistent exercise of real love.

M. Scott Peck
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.

M. Scott Peck
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.

M. Scott Peck
The feeling of being valuable - 'I am a valuable person'- is essential to mental health and is a cornerstone of self-discipline.

M. Scott Peck
When you consider yourself valuable you will take care of yourself in all ways that are necessary.

M. Scott Peck