On Becoming: Carl Rogers

It becomes easier for me to accept myself as a decidedly imperfect person, who by no means functions at all times in the way in which I would like to function. This must seem to some like a very strange direction in which to move. It seems to me to have value because the curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I change.
― Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

What is most personal is most universal.
― Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

I'm not perfect... But I'm enough.
― Carl R. Rogers

I believe it will have become evident why, for me, adjectives such as happy, contented, blissful, enjoyable, do not seem quite appropriate to any general description of this process I have called the good life, even though the person in this process would experience each one of these at the appropriate times. But adjectives which seem more generally fitting are adjectives such as enriching, exciting, rewarding, challenging, meaningful. This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-fainthearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one's potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life. Yet the deeply exciting thing about human beings is that when the individual is inwardly free, he chooses as the good life this process of becoming.
― Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

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 R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

Am I living in a way which is deeply satisfying to me, and which truly expresses me?
― Carl R. Rogers

There is direction but there is no destination.
― Carl R. 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."
― Carl R. 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?
― Carl R. Rogers