Rollo May Quotes

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

Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.

If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.

Fortunately, however, we no longer have to argue that self -love is not only necessary and good but that it also is a prerequisite for loving others.

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

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

Real freedom is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose.

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.

The schizoid man is the natural product of the technological man. It is one way to live and is increasingly utilized and it may explode into violence.

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

Depression is the inability to construct a future.

Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, this is me and the damned world can go to hell.

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

Memory is not just the imprint of the past time upon us; it is the keeper of what is meaningful for our deepest hopes and fears.

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.

One does not become fully human painlessly.

In religion, it is not the sycophants or those who cling most faithfully to the status quo who are ultimately praised. It is the insurgents.

Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence.

One of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety is that we are forced to become aware of ourselves.

There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular - though profoundly mistaken - definition of myth as falsehood.

Beauty is the experience that gives us a sense of joy and a sense of peace simultaneously.

The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free.

Science, Nietzsche had warned, is becoming a factory, and the result will be ethical nihilism.

Recall how often in human history the saint and the rebel have be the same person. (p. 35)

People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day to day.

Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is.

One of the easiest ways to be irresponsible about power is to forget you have it.

Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one's death.

The amazing thing about love is that it is the best way to get to know ourselves.

It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.

The receptivity of the artist must never be confused with passivity. Receptivity is the artist's holding him or herself alive and open to hear what being may speak.

I learned that healing and cure are active processes in which I myself needed to participate.

What if imagination and art are not frosting at all, but the fountainhead of human experience?

Vanity and narcissism — the compulsive need to be admired and praised — undermine one's courage, for one then fights on someone else's conviction rather than one's own.

Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable.

A dynamic struggle goes on within a person between what he or she consciously thinks on the one hand and, on the other, some insight, some perspective that is struggling to be born.

It is dangerous to know, but it is more dangerous not to know.

Receptivity requires a nimbleness, a fine-honed sensitivity in order to let one's self be the vehicle of whatever vision may emerge.

Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us.

There is an energy field between humans. And, when we reach out in passion, it is met with an answering passion and changes the relationship forever.

People only change when it becomes too dangerous to stay the way they are.

Violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness.

Evil, in this system of ethics, is that which tears apart, shuts out the other person, raises barriers, sets people against each other.

Poets often have a conscious awareness that they are struggling with the daimonic, and that the issue is their working something through from the depths which push the self to a new plane.

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.

When we are dealing with human beings, no truth has reality by itself; it is always dependent upon the reality of the immediate relationship.

Creativity is neither the product of neurosis nor simple talent, but an intense courageous encounter with the Gods.

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

Human freedom involves our capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.