Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

Maslow is challenging the common assumption that “objectivity” is a cold absence of feeling. He suggests that the drive to see clearly—to prefer evidence over wishful thinking and to submit one’s beliefs to reality—is itself an affective commitment. In this view, the scientist’s or truth-seeker’s restraint is not neutrality but a disciplined devotion: a “passion” directed toward what is real. The line fits Maslow’s broader humanistic psychology, which treats truthfulness and accurate perception as marks of psychological health and self-actualization, and it implies that valuing truth can be as motivating and morally charged as any overt emotion.