xx H.H. Price... observed: "In the early stages of any inquiry it is a mistake to lay down a hard-and-fast
distinction between a scientific investigation of the facts and a philosophical reflection about them... At the later
stages the distinction is right and proper. But if it is drawn to soon and too rigorously those later stages will never be
reached."
p.4-5 The pioneer, the creator, the explorer is generally a single, lonely person rather
than a group, struggling all alone with his inner conflicts, fears, defenses against arrogance and pride, even against paranoia.
He has to be a courageous man, not afraid to stick his neck out, not afraid even to make mistakes, well aware
that he is, as Polanyi... has stressed, a kind of gambler who comes to tentative conclusions in the absence of facts and then
spends some years trying to find out if his hunch was correct. If he has any sense at all, he is of course scared
of his own ideas, of his temerity, and is well aware that he is affirming what he cannot prove.
p.9 My theory of metamotivation (Chapter 23) ultimately rests upon this operation, namely, of taking superior
people who are also superior perceivers not only of facts but of values, and then using their choices of ultimate values as
possibly the ultimate values for the whole species.
p.10 What is good? What is desirable? What should be desired?
p.11 Apparently it is now possible to say that the healthy organism itself gives clear and loud signals
about what it, the organism, prefers or chooses, or considers to be desirable states of affairs.
p.33 Conflict itself is, of course, a sign of relative health as you would know if you
ever met really apathetic people, really hopeless people, people who have given up hoping, striving, and coping. Neurosis
is... a kind of timid and ineffectual striving toward self-actualization, toward full humanness.
p.58 scientists as a group are not nearly as creative generally as you would expect... If I wanted
to be mischievous about it, I could go so far as to define science as a technique whereby noncreative people can create...
Science is a technique, social and institutionalized, whereby even unintelligent people can be useful in the advance of knowledge...
Since any particular scientist... stands on so many shoulders of so many predecessors.. his own shortcomings may not appear...
when he discovers something, I have learned to understand this as a product of a social institution, of a collaboration.
p.92 The question is, Who is interested in creativity? And my answer is that practically everybody is.
p.103 Too many people of limited vision define the essence of science as cautious checking, validating of
hypotheses, finding out if other people's ideas are correct or not. But, insofar as science is also a technique of discovery,
it will have to learn how to foster peak-experience insights and visions and then how to handle them as data.
p.117 knowledge brings certainty of decision, action, choice and what to do, and, therefore, strength of
arm.
p.171 it happens that music and rhythm and dancing are excellent ways of moving toward the discovering of
identity.
p.228 classical economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could
also be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self-actualization...
I am sure that something similar is also true for... all human and social sciences and professions [JLJ -
perhaps even game theory]
p.230 needs which have been fully gratified tend to be forgotten by the individual and to disappear
from consciousness. Gratified basic needs just simply cease to exist in a certain sense, at least in consciousness.
Therefore, what the person is craving and wanting and wishing for tends to be that which is just out ahead of him
in the motivational hierarchy. Focusing on this particular need indicates that all the lower needs have been satisfied
