This is real Maslow, word for word — it opens the section headed “The Need for Self-Actualization” in Motivation and Personality, first published in 1954 and read here in the second edition (Harper & Row, 1970) at p. 46. One wrinkle worth knowing: the sentence began life in his 1943 Psychological Review paper, where it ends “if he is to be ultimately happy” — the familiar “at peace with himself” is Maslow’s own later revision for the book.
“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself” Abraham H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality (1954); the earlier 1943 Psychological Review version reads "ultimately happy." Via Quotle.info · Verbatim: “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.”
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Provenance
The passage in Maslow’s own book
Work
Motivation and Personality
Edition
First published 1954 (Harper & Brothers); read here in the 2nd edition, Harper & Row, New York, 1970, p. 46
Location
Chapter 4, “A Theory of Human Motivation” — the section headed “The Need for Self-Actualization”
Earlier version
“A Theory of Human Motivation,” Psychological Review 50, no. 4 (1943), p. 382 — where the sentence ends “ultimately happy”
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. He must be true to his own nature. This need we may call self-actualization.
Motivation and Personality, 2nd ed. (1970), p. 46
Immediately before this, Maslow observes that even when every other need is satisfied a new restlessness sets in unless a person is doing what he is individually fitted for. The sentence is the hinge of the whole concept — it is where self-actualization enters the hierarchy.
1943 — the first draft of the thought. In “A Theory of Human Motivation,” Psychological Review 50, no. 4, Maslow writes at p. 382: “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy.” The full text is hosted by York University’s Classics in the History of Psychology ↗.
1954 — the wording everyone now quotes. The paper is reworked into Motivation and Personality, where the sentence ends “if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself” and gains the follow-on “He must be true to his own nature.” The passage sits at p. 46 of the second edition, Harper & Row, New York, 1970 ↗.
Today — the line travels without its book.Wikiquote ↗ records the “at peace with himself” wording twice: once under Motivation and Personality (1954), p. 93, and once — less accurately — under the 1943 article.
The companion sentence gets its own life. “What a man can be, he must be” is quoted on its own constantly; Wikipedia’s hierarchy-of-needs article ↗ cites it to Maslow 1954, p. 91.
Motivation and Personality was first published in 1954 ↗ and revised in 1970, so both the book and this wording are well inside copyright in the United States — nothing here is public domain. The earlier 1943 Psychological Review article is also post-1930 and should be treated as protected. Short quotation for identification and comment is one thing; reproducing the passage at length needs permission from the rights holders.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Right author, wrong source
This one is not a fabrication — Maslow really wrote it. What goes wrong is the citation: the line is routinely pinned to his famous 1943 paper, which contains a different last clause.
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The sourceThe 1943 Psychological Review paper Mis-sourced
The 1943 article’s own text reads “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy” — see the page-382 marker in the full text at Classics in the History of Psychology ↗. The familiar “at peace with himself” belongs to the book, not the paper; even Wikiquote ↗ lists the “at peace” wording under the 1943 citation.
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The page number“Motivation and Personality, p. 91” — or 93, or 46 Edition drift
The book ran to three editions and the pagination moved. Wikiquote ↗ gives p. 93 for the 1954 edition, while Wikipedia ↗ cites Maslow 1954, p. 91 for the next sentence; in the 1970 second edition ↗ the passage sits at p. 46. A page number without an edition is not really a citation.
✕
The wording“What one can be, one must be” Modernised
The gender-neutral rewrite circulates widely on quote graphics, but Maslow’s text — in both the 1943 paper and the book — reads “What a man can be, he must be,” with the emphasis falling on the two verbs. That is an observation from the printed pages themselves, not a claim about who first reworded it.
✓Genuine Maslow — but quote it from Motivation and Personality (1954), not from the 1943 paper ↗, where the sentence ends “ultimately happy.”
Context
Why the changed word matters
Maslow spent 1943 arguing that human needs stack: satisfy hunger and safety turns up; satisfy safety and belonging turns up. The sentence about the musician, the artist and the poet is where the stack runs out of ordinary answers — the point at which someone with everything is still restless, because he is not doing the thing he is built to do.
When he rebuilt the paper into Motivation and Personality, Maslow quietly swapped “ultimately happy” for “ultimately at peace with himself,” and added a line: “He must be true to his own nature.” It is a small edit that changes the promise. Self-actualization stops being a route to happiness and becomes something closer to a debt you owe your own capacities — which is, not coincidentally, the version that stuck.
What a man can be, he must be.
Where the term “self-actualization” came from
Maslow is explicit in the same passage that he did not coin the word: he credits Kurt Goldstein, and says he is using it in a “more specific and limited fashion” than Goldstein did. The familiar pyramid diagram came later still — Maslow himself drew no pyramid in this chapter.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1908–1970 · American psychologist · founder of humanistic psychology
Abraham Harold Maslow (1 April 1908 – 8 June 1970) was an American psychologist who taught at Brooklyn College and Brandeis and is remembered above all for the hierarchy of needs he first laid out in a 1943 Psychological Review paper. Where the psychology of his day studied illness, Maslow insisted on studying flourishing — what people are like when nothing is broken. He expanded that paper into Motivation and Personality (1954), the book that carries this sentence and that made “self-actualization” — a term he credits in the same passage to Kurt Goldstein — part of everyday language.
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Cite this
Chicago
Abraham H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 46. First published 1954. An earlier version of the sentence appears in A. H. Maslow, “A Theory of Human Motivation,” Psychological Review 50, no. 4 (1943): 382, where it reads “ultimately happy.”
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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself’?” Last verified 24 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/a-musician-must-make-music-an-artist-must-paint-a-poet-must/