Carl Rogers

Psychologist

1902-01-08

Quotes by Carl Rogers

• The strongest force in our universe is not overriding power, but love.

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• Although the client-centered approach had its origin purely within the limits of the psychological clinic, it is proving to have implications, often of a startling nature, for very diverse fields of effort.

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• Real communication occurs...when we listen with understanding. What does this mean? It means to see the expressed idea and attitude from the other person's point of view, to sense how it feels to him, to achieve his frame of reference in regard to the thing he is talking about.

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• Hearing has consequences. When I truly hear a person and the meanings that are important to him at that moment, hearing not simply his words, but him, and when I let him know that I have heard his own private personal meanings, many things happen. There is first of all a grateful look. He feels released. He wants to tell me more about his world. He surges forth in a new sense of freedom. He becomes more open to the process of change. I have often noticed that the more deeply I hear the meanings of the person, the more there is that happens. Almost always, when a person realize 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.

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• Although the client-centered approach had its origin purely within the limits of the psychological clinic, it is proving to have implications, often of a startling nature, for very diverse fields of effort.

  Read quote

• Real communication occurs...when we listen with understanding. What does this mean? It means to see the expressed idea and attitude from the other person's point of view, to sense how it feels to him, to achieve his frame of reference in regard to the thing he is talking about.

  Read quote

• Hearing has consequences. When I truly hear a person and the meanings that are important to him at that moment, hearing not simply his words, but him, and when I let him know that I have heard his own private personal meanings, many things happen. There is first of all a grateful look. He feels released. He wants to tell me more about his world. He surges forth in a new sense of freedom. He becomes more open to the process of change. I have often noticed that the more deeply I hear the meanings of the person, the more there is that happens. Almost always, when a person realize 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.

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• The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.

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• In a person who is open to experience each stimulus is freely relayed through the nervous system, without being distorted by any process of defensiveness.

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• I believe that the testing of the student's achievements in order to see if he meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the implications of therapy for significant learning.

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• The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.

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• When I look at the world I'm pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.

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