Carl Ransom Rogers was an American psychologist known for his influential psychotherapy method. He was among the founders of the humanistic approach to psychology and widely regarded as one of the most eminent thinkers in psychology. Inspirational Carl Rogers quotes will never get out of your head and encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would.
If you’re searching for life quotes and sayings that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of John Dewey quotes, inspirational Sigmund Freud quotes, and powerful Viktor E. Frankl quotes.
Most Famous Carl Rogers Quotes
Over the years, however, the research evidence keeps piling up, and it points strongly to the conclusion that a high degree of empathy in a relationship is possibly the most potent and certainly one of the most potent factors in bringing about change and learning. Carl Rogers
A person cannot teach another person directly; a person can only facilitate another’s learning.
Empathy is the listener’s effort to hear the other person deeply, accurately, and non judgmentally. Empathy involves skillful reflective listening that clarifies and amplifies the person’s own experiencing and meaning, without imposing the listener’s own material. Carl Rogers
Am I living in a way which is deeply satisfying to me, and which truly expresses me?
We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know. Carl Rogers
As no one else can know how we perceive, we are the best experts on ourselves.
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change. Carl Rogers
Being empathetic is seeing the world through the eyes of the other, not seeing your world reflected in their eyes.
People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, ‘Soften the orange a bit on the right-hand corner.’ I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds. Carl Rogers
Growth occurs when individuals confront problems, struggle to master them, and through that struggle develop new aspects of their skills, capacities, views about life
The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change. Carl Rogers
I don’t believe that anyone has ever taught anything to anyone. I question that efficacy of teaching. The only thing that I know is that anyone who wants to learn will learn. And maybe a teacher is a facilitator, a person who puts things down and shows people how exciting and wonderful it is and asks them to eat.
As no one else can know how we perceive, we are the best experts on ourselves. Carl Rogers
I feel happier just for being myself and letting others be themselves.
When the other person is hurting, confused, troubled, anxious, alienated, terrified; or when he or she is doubtful of self worth, uncertain as to identity, then understanding is called for. The gentle and sensitive companionship of an empathic stance provides illumination and healing. In such situations, deep understanding is, I believe, the most precious gift one can give to another. Carl Rogers
I realize that, if I were stable, prudent, and static, I would live in death. Therefore, I accept confusion, uncertainty, fear, and emotional ups and downs. Because that is the price I am willing to pay for a fluid, perplexing, and exciting life
When someone really hears you without passing judgment on you, without trying to take responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it feels damn good When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re perceive my world in a new way and to go on. Carl Rogers
If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self direction, and for self initiated learning.
Empathy is a special way of coming to know another and ourselves, a kind of attuning and understanding. When empathy is extended, it satisfies our needs and wishes for intimacy, it rescues us from our feelings of aloneness. Carl Rogers
In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?
Powerful is our need to be known, really known by ourselves and others, even if only for a moment. Carl Rogers
It’s not about getting the feeling out of the mind, or hiding it, but about experiencing it with acceptance
Am I living in a way which is deeply satisfying to me, and which truly expresses me? Carl Rogers
Loneliness is a barrier that prevents one from uniting with the inner self.
I realize that if I were stable and steady and static, I would be living death. So I accept confusion and uncertainty and fear and emotional highs and lows because they are the price I willingly pay for a flowing, perplexing, exciting life. Carl Rogers
Man’s inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively.
It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard. Carl Rogers
People only seriously consider change when they feel accepted for exactly who they are.
The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination. Carl Rogers
Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it.
It is the client who knows what hurts, what directions to go, what problems are crucial, what experiences have been deeply buried. It began to occur to me that unless I had a need to demonstrate my own cleverness and learning, I would do better to rely upon the client for the direction of movement in the process. Carl Rogers
Powerful is our need to be known, really known by ourselves and others, even if only for a moment.
It’s not about getting the feeling out of the mind, or hiding it, but about experiencing it with acceptance. Carl Rogers
The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.
Being empathetic is seeing the world through the eyes of the other, not seeing your world reflected in their eyes. Carl Rogers
The only person who cannot be helped is that person who blames others.
What I am is good enough if I would only be it openly. Carl Rogers
The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.
Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person’s ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience. It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming me. Carl Rogers
There is direction but there is no destination.
One of the most satisfying experiences I know is fully to appreciate an individual in the same way I appreciate a sunset. Carl Rogers
True empathy is always free of any evaluative or diagnostic quality. This comes across to the recipient with some surprise. If I am not being judged, perhaps I am not so evil or abnormal as I have thought.
In my early professionals years, I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth? Carl Rogers
We in the West seem to have made a fetish out of complete individual self sufficiency, of not needing help, of being completely private except in a very few selected relationships.
A person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing river of change, not a block of solid material; a continually changing constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits. Carl Rogers
What you are to be, you are now becoming.
The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it. Carl Rogers
When a person realizes 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.
It is not that this focus of power to the person, it is that it never takes it away. Carl Rogers
When I look at the world I’m pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.
Life, at its best, is a fluid and changing process in which nothing is fixed. Carl Rogers
If a person lives among people with very different beliefs, he can not adapt to them without a fundamental change.
I have gradually come to one negative conclusion about the good life. It seems to me that the good life is not any fixed state. Carl Rogers
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change. Carl R. Rogers
What is most personal is most universal. Carl Rogers
The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change. Carl R. Rogers
There is direction but there is no destination. Carl Rogers
People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner.” I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds. Carl R. Rogers
The degree to which I can create relationships, which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons, is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself. Carl Rogers.
We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know. Carl R. Rogers
With the price of life these days, you’ve got to get everything for free you can. Carl Rogers.
What you are to be, you are now becoming. Carl R. Rogers
The facts are always friendly, every bit of evidence one can acquire, in any area, leads one that much closer to what is true. Carl Rogers
The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination. Carl R. Rogers
When I look at the world I’m pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic. Carl Rogers
Growth occurs when individuals confront problems, struggle to master them, and through that struggle develop new aspects of their skills, capacities, views about life. Carl R. Rogers
A person’s real need, a most terrible need, is for someone to listen not as a ‘patient’ but as a human soul. To listen well is to respond to a great human yearning. Carl Rogers
Man’s inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively. Carl R. Rogers
