Quotes of Rollo May - somelinesforyou

“ Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don’t find themselves at all. ”

- Rollo May

“ Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem. ”

- Rollo May

“ In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone. ”

- Rollo May

“ It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when they have lost their way. ”

- Rollo May

“ We in our age are faced with a strange paradox. Never before have we had so much information in bits and pieces flooded upon us by radio and television and satellite, yet never before have we had so little inner certainty about our own being. The more objective truth increases, the more our inner certitude decreases. Our fantastically increased technical power, and each forward step in technology is experienced by many as a new push toward our possible annihilation. Nietzsche was strangely prophetic when he said, “We live in a period of atomic chaos…the terrible apparition…the Nation State…and the hunt for happiness will never be greater than when it must be caught between today and tomorrow; because the day after tomorrow all hunting time may have come to an end altogether.” Sensing this, and despairing of ever finding meaning in life, people these days seize on the many ways of dulling their awareness by apathy, by psychic numbing, or by hedonism. Others, especially young people, elect in alarming and increasing numbers to escape their own being by suicide. ”

- Rollo May

“ The battle with the gods thus hinges on our own mortality! Creativity is a yearning for immortality. ”

- Rollo May

“ Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us. Like a chemical mixture, if one of us is changed, both of us will be. Will we grow in selfactualization, or will it destroy us? The one thing we can be certain of is that if we let ourselves fully into the relationship for good or evil, we will not come out unaffected. ”

- Rollo May

“ It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths. ”

- Rollo May

“ Courage is not a virtue of value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage our love pales into mere dependency. Without courage our fidelity becomes conformism. ”

- Rollo May

“ Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human tenderness. ”

- Rollo May

“ Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about. ”

- Rollo May

“ Courage is required not only in a person's occasional crucial decision for his own freedom, but in the little hour-to-hour decisions which place the bricks in the structure of his building of himself into a person who acts with freedom and responsibility. ”

- Rollo May

“ The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them… ”

- Rollo May

“ In my clinical experience, the greatest block to a person's development is his having to take on a way of life which is not rooted in his own powers. ”

- Rollo May

“ The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity. ”

- Rollo May

“ Courage is not a virtue of value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage our love pales into mere dependency. Without courage our fidelity becomes conformism. ”

- Rollo May

“ Freedom requires the capacity to accept, bear and live constructively with anxiety. I refer of course to the normal anxiety all of us experience at every step in our psychological growth as well as in this upset contemporary world. To be free means to face and bear anxiety; to run away from anxiety means automatically to surrender one's freedom. ”

- Rollo May

“ The first thing necessary for a constructive dealing with time is to learn to live in the reality of the present moment. For psychologically speaking, this present moment is all we have. ”

- Rollo May

“ Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing. ”

- Rollo May

“ Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing. ”

- Rollo May

“ Apathy adds up, in the long run, to cowardice. ”

- Rollo May

“ The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it's not without doubt but in spite of doubt. ”

- Rollo May

“ The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them… ”

- Rollo May

“ It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle. ”

- Rollo May

“ Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing. ”

- Rollo May

“ The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it's not without doubt but in spite of doubt. ”

- Rollo May

“ Courage is required not only in a person's occasional crucial decision for his own freedom, but in the little hour-to-hour decisions which place the bricks in the structure of his building of himself into a person who acts with freedom and responsibility. ”

- Rollo May

“ Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human tenderness. ”

- Rollo May

“ Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about. ”

- Rollo May

“ The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity. ”

- Rollo May
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8