William Ernest Hocking Quotes

Nobody can decide for himself whether he is going to be a human being. The only question open to him is whether he will be an ignorant undeveloped one or one who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining.

We're all looking for the highest, fullest expression of ourselves as a human being.

Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.

Let each become all that he was created capable of being.

I care most about how people live their lives, what choices they make, and how they get the best from themselves.

A true desire is not to have but to be. We are whole creatures in potential, and the true purpose of desire is to unfold that wholeness, to become what we can be.

The need of man to wholly realize himself is the only fixed star.

on first priority in design consideration is the full realization of individual potential in order to reach the second derivative full realization for all individuals

In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others. . . .

Education should bring to light the ideal of the individual.

Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting, the first in importance surely is man himself.

So to conduct one's life as to realize oneself-this seems to me the highest attainment possible to a human being. It is the task of one and all of us, but most of us bungle it.

What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

I have made as much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should require more.

I've had an addiction for a long time to the whole business of maximizing one's potential, what I call human activation. The vehicle for actualizing oneself is choice, options, seeking out the proper choices.

What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one's potential.

At the end of the day, life's about realising one's human potential. I don't know if I've realised mine, but I've certainly gone a long way towards realising some goals and some dreams.

Success, in a generally accepted sense of the term, means the opportunity to experience and to realize to the maximum the forces that are within us.

To become what we are capable of becoming is the only end in life.