Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred

Attributed to Abraham Maslow 1908–1970 · American psychologist, founder of humanistic psychology
Attributed Rights unconfirmed

Widely credited to Maslow, and squarely in keeping with his writing on self-actualizing people — his own list of their traits includes a “philosophical, unhostile sense of humor.” But no book, paper, lecture or journal entry of his has been shown to contain this sentence. Wikiquote files it under Attributed, and the only citation anyone offers is a 1998 stress-and-humour book published twenty-eight years after Maslow’s death.

Last verified 24 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Unconfirmed quote & credit

“Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred” attributed to Abraham Maslow (1908–1970). No source in Maslow's own writings has been identified; Wikiquote lists it under "Attributed," citing Loretta LaRoche, Relax — You May Only Have a Few Minutes Left (Villard, 1998), p. xvii. Checked via Quotle.info.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Abraham Maslow — American psychologist · Brandeis University · hierarchy of needs. Theme: "Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The paper trail

Credited to
Abraham Maslow (1908–1970)
Primary source
None located — absent from Maslow’s published books and papers
Earliest citation offered
Relax — You May Only Have a Few Minutes Left (Villard, 1998), p. xvii
Wikiquote status
Attributed — not Sourced

Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred. No primary source

There is no surrounding passage to quote. The sentence circulates as a free-standing aphorism, and every printed trail runs into a third party’s book rather than a page of Maslow’s.

Wikiquote: Abraham Maslow — Attributed

How we checked

  • Wikiquote’s Abraham Maslow page ↗ carries the line in its Attributed section, below the quotations it can tie to specific works, and gives one citation for it: Loretta LaRoche, p. xvii.
  • Open Library ↗ confirms that book — Relax — You May Only Have a Few Minutes Left: Using the Power of Humor to Overcome Stress in Your Life and Work, Loretta LaRoche, published by Villard in 1998.
  • Maslow died on 8 June 1970 ↗, so the only citation on offer post-dates him by twenty-eight years. Quote aggregators do not improve on it: A-Z Quotes ↗ lists the line and points back to the same 1998 book.
  • We searched the full text of Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences — the Maslow book most concerned with the sacred, first published in 1964 ↗ — and the sentence does not appear in it. That is an absence, not a disproof, but it is where a line like this ought to have been.

Rights cannot be settled because the origin cannot be. No work by Maslow has been identified as containing this sentence, so there is no publication date to reason from — and nothing here should be treated as public domain. If the wording in fact originates with the 1998 LaRoche book rather than with Maslow, it would be in copyright to that author and publisher. Treat the line as of undetermined status and quote it with attribution and a hedge.

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

What’s actually wrong here

No rival author claims this sentence. The problem is not a wrong name — it is a missing source, quietly presented as though one existed.

Abraham Maslow unsourced

Wikiquote ↗ puts the line in its Attributed list, separate from the quotations it can tie to Motivation and Personality (1954), The Psychology of Science (1966) and his other books. It is not filed as a fake — it is filed as unproven.

Loretta LaRoche’s 1998 humour book secondary source

Even the big aggregators end up here: A-Z Quotes ↗ credits the line to Maslow but sources it to LaRoche’s Relax — You May Only Have a Few Minutes Left (1998) — A-Z Quotes and Wikiquote both print that title with the words transposed, as You May Have Only. A book about stress reduction quoting Maslow is not Maslow.

‘Hierarchy of needs’ Maslow halo effect

Maslow really did treat humour as a marker of psychological health — a “philosophical, unhostile sense of humor” is one of the traits he listed for self-actualizing people ↗. The line fits him so well that nobody thought to ask where it came from.

Honest verdict: attributed, not verified. Nothing shows the line is someone else’s, and nothing shows it is Maslow’s either — Wikiquote’s own filing ↗ is the most careful statement available, and it stops short of a source.

Context

Why this one sticks to Maslow

The sentence does a neat trick in eleven words: it refuses the usual bargain in which reverence and comedy are enemies. That is a recognisably mid-century humanistic idea, and Maslow is the mid-century humanist most people can name — so the line lands on him the way stray wit lands on Mark Twain and stray uplift lands on Einstein.

There is also a real hook. When Maslow catalogued the characteristics of self-actualizing people, he did not treat humour as decoration; a philosophical, unhostile sense of humor is one of the listed traits, sitting beside spontaneity, autonomy and peak experiences. A quote that says you can mock a thing and still kneel to it sounds like something that catalogue could have produced. Sounding like an author is not the same as being written by one.

The attribution is plausible, which is precisely why nobody ever checked it.

Read the full story

The paper trail is short and it runs the wrong way. Wikiquote’s entry cites the line to page xvii of Loretta LaRoche’s Relax — You May Only Have a Few Minutes Left, a humour-and-stress-reduction book published by Villard in 1998. Maslow died in June 1970. A citation twenty-eight years posthumous is not evidence of authorship; it is evidence that by 1998 the line was already circulating with his name on it.

That is the shape of a quotation that has slipped its moorings rather than one that was invented to deceive. It may yet turn out to be Maslow — from a lecture, a seminar, an unpublished journal page, or a paraphrase of him that hardened into a quotation. Until a page number in something he actually wrote turns up, the honest label is attributed, not said.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Humility Wisdom Character

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Abraham Maslow — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Lists this line in the “Attributed” section — not among the sourced quotes — citing only Loretta LaRoche (1998), p. xvii.
Abraham Maslow — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Biography confirming his dates (1 April 1908 – 8 June 1970) and the chronology of his published books.
Relax — You May Only Have a Few Minutes Leftopenlibrary.org

Catalogue record for the Loretta LaRoche book that Wikiquote cites: Villard, 1998.
Maslow’s self-actualizing characteristicssocialsci.libretexts.org

Enumerates Maslow’s fourteen traits of self-actualizing people, including “philosophical, unhostile sense of humor.”
Motivation and Personality (1954)archive.org

Maslow’s first major book, Harper, 1954 — the volume that contains his account of humour in self-actualizing people.
Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences (1964)archive.org

Maslow on the sacred, Ohio State University Press, 1964 — the obvious home for a line like this, and it is not there.

The man it is pinned on

Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow

1908–1970 · American psychologist · Brandeis University · hierarchy of needs

Abraham Maslow (born 1 April 1908, died 8 June 1970) was an American psychologist who spent most of his career at Brooklyn College and then Brandeis University, and who is remembered above all for the hierarchy of needs and the idea of self-actualization. His major books — Motivation and Personality (1954), Toward a Psychology of Being (1962) and Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences (1964) — argued that psychology had studied sickness so thoroughly it had forgotten to study health. Humour genuinely mattered to him: in his portrait of self-actualizing people, a “philosophical, unhostile sense of humor” sits in the list alongside spontaneity, autonomy and peak experiences — which is exactly why a line like this one attaches to him so easily.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

How to cite this

Attributed to Abraham Maslow; no source in his own writings has been identified. Wikiquote lists the line in its “Attributed” section, citing Loretta LaRoche, Relax — You May Only Have a Few Minutes Left: Using the Power of Humor to Overcome Stress in Your Life and Work (New York: Villard, 1998), p. xvii.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred’?” Last verified 24 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/laugh-at-what-you-hold-sacred-and-still-hold-it-sacred/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied