Let these Gabor Maté quotes broaden your understanding of the biological, psychological, and social factors that shape our well-being. It’s time to embrace happiness!
Author’s Favorites: 10 Best Gabor Maté Quotes
1. “We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world.” ― Gabor Maté
2. The capacity to be present with and understand and see the other human being for exactly who they are and to accept them for who they are and to invite them unconditionally to be in your presence exactly the way they are.. that is what love actually is.” ― Gabor Maté
3. “Whatever external treatment is administered, the healing agent lies within.” ― Gabor Maté
4. “I needed to write, to express myself through written language not only so that others might hear me but so that I could hear myself.” ― Gabor Maté
5. “Autonomy is impossible as long as one is driven by anything.” ― Gabor Maté
6. “Judgment or blaming is not the point. Understanding is.” ― Gabor Maté
7. “There is no path toward oneself that leads away from the pain.” ― Gabor Maté
8. “We readily feel for the suffering child, but cannot see the child in the adult who, his soul fragmented and isolated, hustles for survival a few blocks away from where we shop or work.” ― Gabor Maté
9. “Everyone has an urge to create. Its expression may flow through many channels… The point is to honor the urge. To do so is healing for ourselves and for others; not to do so deadens our bodies and our spirits.” ― Gabor Maté
10. “Affirmation — When we affirm, we make a positive statement; we move toward something of value.” ― Gabor Maté
See also: 80 Powerful Spiritual Affirmations To Awaken Your Spirit
Wise Quotes By Gabor Maté
1. “If we want to help people seek the possibility of transformation within themselves, we first have to transform our own view of our relationship to them.” ― Gabor Maté
2. “The onset of inauthenticity may not be a choice, but with awareness and self-compassion, authenticity can be.” ― Gabor Maté
3. “We keep trying to change people’s behaviors without a full understanding of how and why those behaviors arise.” ― Gabor Maté
4. “Learn to read symptoms not only as problems to be overcome but as messages to be heeded.” ― Gabor Maté
5. “Most of our tensions and frustrations stem from compulsive needs to act the role of someone we are not.” ― Gabor Maté
6. “The power of negative thinking requires the removal of rose-colored glasses. Not blame of others but owning responsibility for one’s relationships is the key.” ― Gabor Maté
7. “Whenever we ascribe a motive to the other person, as in “you are doing this because…,” we discard curiosity and immobilize compassion.” ― Gabor Maté
8. “The power to parent will be transferred to whomever the child depends on, whether or not that person is truly dependable, appropriate, responsible, or compassionate — whether or not, in fact, that person is even an adult.” ― Gabor Maté
9. “The sparser the innate joy that springs from being alive, the more fervently we seek joy’s pale substitute, pleasure; the less our inner strength, the greater our craving for power; the feebler our awareness of truth, the more desperate our search for certainty outside of ourselves.” ― Gabor Maté
10. “The best attitude to adopt is one of compassionate patience, which has to include a tolerance for failure.” ― Gabor Maté
See also: 400 Quotes About Failure That Teach Valuable Life Lessons
Thought-Provoking Quotes By Gabor Maté
1. “To know the true nature of a society, it’s not enough to point to its achievements, as leaders like to do. We also need to look at its shortcomings.” ― Gabor Maté
2. “We too often present an artificial, “Botoxed” version of ourselves: an image not of who we are but of how we would like to be perceived by others… We have just lost this capacity to be real, which is fundamentally what makes us human, and what makes us feel connected to each other.” ― Gabor Maté
3. “We have seen in study after study that compulsive positive thinkers are more likely to develop disease and less likely to survive. Genuine positive thinking — or, more deeply, positive being — empowers us to know that we have nothing to fear from truth.” ― Gabor Maté
4. “Your worst enemy cannot hurt you as much as your own thoughts, when you haven’t mastered them,” said the Buddha. “But once mastered, no one can help you as much—not even your father and your mother.” ― Gabor Maté
5. “No society can understand itself without looking at its shadow side.” ― Gabor Maté
6. “Shame is the deepest of the “negative emotions,” a feeling we will do almost anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs our ability to see reality.” ― Gabor Maté
7. “Not every story has a happy ending, … but the discoveries of science, the teachings of the heart, and the revelations of the soul all assure us that no human being is ever beyond redemption. The possibility of renewal exists so long as life exists. How to support that possibility in others and in ourselves is the ultimate question.” ― Gabor Maté
8. “Whether we realize it or not, it is our woundedness, or how we cope with it, that dictates much of our behavior, shapes our social habits, and informs our ways of thinking about the world.” ― Gabor Maté
9. “Resentment is soul suicide. Negative thinking allows us to gaze unflinchingly on our own behalf at what does not work.” ― Gabor Maté
10. “What seems like a reaction to some present circumstance is, in fact, a reliving of past emotional experience.” ― Gabor Maté
Gabor Maté Quotes About Addiction
1. “Addiction is not a choice that anybody makes; it’s not a moral failure. What it actually is: it’s a response to human suffering.” ― Gabor Maté
2. “Addiction is always a poor substitute for love.” ― Gabor Maté
3. “Not all addictions are rooted in abuse or trauma, but I do believe they can all be traced to painful experiences… The wound may not be as deep and the ache not as excruciating, and it may even be entirely hidden—but it’s there. As we’ll see, the effects of early stress or adverse experiences directly shape both the psychology and the neurobiology of addiction in the brain.” ― Gabor Maté
4. “It is impossible to understand addiction without asking what relief the addict finds, or hopes to find, in the drug or the addictive behavior.” ― Gabor Maté
5. “Addictions always originate in pain, whether felt openly or hidden in the unconscious. They are emotional anesthetics. Heroin and cocaine, both powerful physical painkillers, also ease psychological discomfort.” ― Gabor Maté
6. “We may not be responsible for another’s addiction or the life history that preceded it, but many painful situations could be avoided if we recognized that we are responsible for the way we ourselves enter into the interaction. And that, to put it most simply, means dealing with our own stuff.” ― Gabor Maté
7. “A hurt is at the center of all addictive behaviors.” ― Gabor Maté
8. “All addictions — whether to drugs or to non-drug behaviors — share the same brain circuits and brain chemicals. On the biochemical level, the purpose of all addictions is to create an altered physiological state in the brain… So an addiction is never purely “psychological”; all addictions have a biological dimension.” ― Gabor Maté
9. “The question is never “Why the addiction?” but “Why the pain?” The research literature is unequivocal: most hard-core substance abusers come from abusive homes.” ― Gabor Maté
10. “The difference between passion and addiction is that between a divine spark and a flame that incinerates.” ― Gabor Maté
Gabor Maté Quotes On Trauma
1. “Trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you.” ― Gabor Maté
2. “The essence of trauma is disconnection from ourselves. Trauma is not terrible things that happen from the other side—those are traumatic. But the trauma is that very separation from the body and emotions.” ― Gabor Maté
3. “The attempt to escape from pain, is what creates more pain.” ― Gabor Maté
4. “All of the diagnoses that you deal with – depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar illness, post traumatic stress disorder, even psychosis, are significantly rooted in trauma. They are manifestations of trauma.” ― Gabor Maté
5. “Trauma is that scarring that makes you less flexible, more rigid, less feeling and more defended.” ― Gabor Maté
6. “Trauma is an inner injury, a lasting rupture or split within the self due to difficult or hurtful events. By this definition, trauma is primarily what happens within someone as a result of the difficult or hurtful events that befall them; it is not the events themselves. “Trauma is not what happens to you but what happens inside you’ is how I formulate it.” ― Gabor Maté
7. “Trauma is when we are not seen and known.” ― Gabor Maté
8. “An event is traumatizing, or retraumatizing, only if it renders one diminished, which is to say psychically (or physically) more limited than before in a way that persists.” ― Gabor Maté
9. “The meaning of the word “trauma,” in its Greek origin is “wound.” Whether we realize it or not, it is our woundedness, or how we cope with it, that dictates much of our behavior, shapes our social habits, and informs our ways of thinking about the world.” ― Gabor Maté
10. “Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human suffering.” ― Gabor Maté
Quotes About Emotions By Gabor Maté
1. “Human beings can tune out entire periods of their lives that were characterized by emotional pain.” ― Gabor Maté
2. “The fact is, we in this society are often quite removed from our own emotional reality.” ― Gabor Maté
3. “Free choice only comes from thinking; it doesn’t come from emotions. It emerges from the capacity to think about your emotions.” ― Gabor Maté
4. “Depending on circumstances, I may choose to manifest the anger in some way or to let go of it. The key is that I have not suppressed the experience of it.” ― Gabor Maté
5. “Self-esteem is not what the individual consciously thinks about himself; it’s the quality of self-respect manifested in his emotional life and behaviors.” ― Gabor Maté
6. “No emotional vulnerability, no growth.” ― Gabor Maté
7. “So self-acceptance does not mean self-admiration or even self-liking at every moment of our lives, but tolerance for all our emotions, including those that make us feel uncomfortable.” ― Gabor Maté
8. “You see, the acting-out, the yelling, the screaming, and even the hitting, all that a person does, serves as a defense against the experience of the anger. It’s a defense against keeping the anger inside where it can be deeply felt. Discharge defends against anger being actually experienced.” ― Gabor Maté
9. “Many of us live, if not alone, then in emotionally inadequate relationships that do not recognize or honor our deepest needs. Isolation and stress affect many who may believe their lives are quite satisfactory.“ ― Gabor Maté
10. “When we flee our vulnerability, we lose our full capacity for feeling emotion.” ― Gabor Maté
Gabor Maté Quotes On Self
1. “Knowing oneself comes from attending with compassionate curiosity to what is happening within.” ― Gabor Maté
2. “When I am sharply judgmental of any other person, it’s because I sense or see reflected in them some aspect of myself that I don’t want to acknowledge.” ― Gabor Maté
3. “Being cut off from our own natural self-compassion is one of the greatest impairments we can suffer. Along with our ability to feel our own pain go our best hopes for healing, dignity, and love.” ― Gabor Maté
4. “Compassionate curiosity directed toward the self leads to the truth of things.” ― Gabor Maté
5. “Music gives me a sense of self-sufficiency and nourishment. I don’t need anyone or anything. I bathe in it as in amniotic fluid; it surrounds and protects me. It’s also stable, ever-available, and something I can control — that is, I can reach for it whenever I want.” ― Gabor Maté
6. “Strong convictions do not necessarily signal a powerful sense of self: very often quite the opposite. Intensely held beliefs may be no more than a person’s unconscious effort to build a sense of self to fill what, underneath, is experienced as a vacuum.” ― Gabor Maté
7. “What we call the personality is often a jumble of genuine traits and adopted coping styles that do not reflect our true self at all but the loss of it.” ― Gabor Maté
8. “Our other core need is authenticity. Definitions vary, but here’s one that I think applies best to this discussion: the quality of being true to oneself, and the capacity to shape one’s own life from a deep knowledge of that self.” ― Gabor Maté
9. “Boredom, rooted in a fundamental discomfort with the self, is one of the least tolerable mental states.” ― Gabor Maté
10. “Since having a strong core self relies on acceptance of feelings, being out of touch with the emotional side puts a person out of touch with herself. What then remains to be esteemed? Only a false self, a concoction of what we would like to imagine ourselves to be and what we have divined others want us to be.” ― Gabor Maté
Quotes About Raising Children By Gabor Maté
1. “Children are a great incentive and impetus for parents to learn about themselves, about each other, and about life itself. Unfortunately, much of the learning may occur at their expense.” ― Gabor Maté
2. “What if our intention, as parents, as educators, as a society, was to raise children in touch with their feelings, authentically empowered to express them, to think independently and be prepared to act on behalf of their principles?” ― Gabor Maté
3. “Whatever the hopes, wishes or intentions of the parent, the child does not experience the parent directly: the child experiences the parenting.” ― Gabor Maté
4. “Love felt by the parent does not automatically translate into love experienced by the child.” ― Gabor Maté
5. “We think that children act, whereas what they mostly do is react. Parents who realize this acquire a powerful tool. By noticing their own responses to the child, rather than fixating on the child’s responses to them, they free up tremendous energy for growth.” ― Gabor Maté
6. “Children, especially highly sensitive children, can be wounded in multiple ways: by bad things happening, yes, but also by good things not happening, such as their emotional needs for attunement not being met.” ― Gabor Maté
7. “As parents who make every effort we can to raise our children in loving security, we do not need to feel more guilt than we already do. We need less guilt and more awareness of how the quality of the parent-child relationship can be used to promote our children’s emotional and cognitive development.” ― Gabor Maté
8. “Sensitive children come to be called “difficult” because adults have trouble understanding their temperament and because parenting methods that work with other children are frustratingly inadequate with this group.” ― Gabor Maté
9. “If our environment cannot support our gut feelings and our emotions, then the child, in order to ‘belong’ and ‘fit in’ will automatically, unwittingly and unconsciously, suppress their emotions and their connections to themselves, for the sake of staying connected to the nurturing environment, without which the child cannot survive.” ― Gabor Maté
10. “Temporary breaks in the relationship with the child are inevitable and are not in themselves harmful unless they are frequent and catastrophic. The real harm is inflicted when the parent makes the child work at reestablishing contact, as in forcing a child to apologize before granting “forgiveness.” ― Gabor Maté
Final Thoughts
I hope this collection of Gabor Maté quotes gave you some valuable insights and reminded you that true well-being is to be achieved only through the integration of mind, body, and spirit!
