Carl Rogers (1902 – 1987)

By Kendra Cherry

Carl Rogers’ work and theories made him one of the preeminent psychologists of the 20th-century. He is best known for creating what is known as client-centered therapy, a nondirective approach that places the client in control of the therapeutic process.

Below are just a few Carl Rogers quotations.

Selected Carl Rogers Quotes

On Human Nature:

“When I look at the world I’m pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.”

Rogers believed that people possessed inherent goodness and that all people are driven by the actualizing tendency. While Freud’s psychoanalysis and Watson‘s behaviorism tended to take a much more negative view of human nature, often focusing on the abnormal or the problematic, Rogers’ approach was much more positive and centered on helping people become the best that they can be.

“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.”

“The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.” — From On Becoming a Person, 1961