Rollo May Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• 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

  Art, Creativity, Rivers

  Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.115, W. W. Norton & Company

  63 Copy quote

• Courage is the capacity to meet the anxiety which arises as one achieves freedom. It is the willingness to differentiate, to move from the protecting realms of parental dependence to new levels of freedom and integration.

  Rollo May

  Courage, Moving, Anxiety

  Rollo May (2009). “Man's Search for Himself”, p.169, W. W. Norton & Company

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

  Rollo May

  Reality, Existentialism, Humans

  Rollo May (1994). “Existence”, p.27, Jason Aronson

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• What is courage? This courage will not be the opposite of despair. We shall often be faced with despair, as indeed every sensitive person has been during the last several decades in this country. Hence Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Camus and Sartre have proclaimed that courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

  Rollo May

  Country, Courage, Moving

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• We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One's religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for.

  Rollo May

  Religious, Attitude, Intellectual

  Rollo May Ph.D. (1953). “Man's Search for Himself”

  7 Copy quote

• The mature person becomes able to differentiate feelings into as many nuances, strong and passionate experiences, or delicate and sensitive ones, as in the different passages of music in a symphony. Unfortunately, many of us have feelings limited like notes in a bugle call.

  Rollo May

  Strong, Symphony, Mature Person

  19 Copy quote

• Artists love to immerse themselves in chaos in order to put it into form, just as God created form out of chaos in Genesis. Forever unsatisfied with the mundane, the apathetic, the conventional, they always push on to newer worlds.

  Rollo May

  Artist, Order, Forever

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• What Kierkegaard said about love is also true of creativity: every person must start at the beginning.

  Rollo May

  Creativity, Love Is, Said

  Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.26, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Freedom does not come automatically; it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound; it must be achieved each day.

  Rollo May

  Doe, Each Day, Bounds

  Rollo May (2009). “Man's Search for Himself”, p.125, W. W. Norton & Company

  7 Copy quote

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

  Rollo May

  Art, Imagination, What If

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• Heroes are necessary in order to enable the citizens to find their own ideals, courage and wisdom in the society. The hero carries our hopes, our aspirations, our ideals, our beliefs. In the deepest sense the hero is created by us; he or she is born collectively as our own myth. This is what makes heroism so important: it reflects our own sense of identity and from this our own heroism is molded.

  Rollo May

  Inspiring, Hero, Order

  30 Copy quote

• Creative people... are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of 'divine madness,' to borrow the term used by the classical Greeks.

  Rollo May

  People, Creative, Anxiety

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• The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free.

  Rollo May

  People, Purpose, Existential

  28 Copy quote

• 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.

  Rollo May

  Meaningful, Memories, Past

  "Man's Search for Himself" by Rollo May, (p. 220), 1953.

  45 Copy quote

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

  Rollo May

  Nihilism, Becoming, Existential

  Rollo May (1994). “Existence”, p.36, Jason Aronson

  24 Copy quote

• There is no meaningful yes unless the individual could also have said no.

  Rollo May

  Meaningful, Individual, Said

  "Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence". Book by Rollo May, ch. 11: The Humanity of the Rebel, 1972.

  5 Copy quote

• By the creative act, we are able to reach beyond our own death.

  Rollo May

  Creativity, Creative, Able

  Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.25, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way; and we grasp more fiercely at research, statistics, and technical aids in sex when we have lost the values and meaning of love.

  Rollo May

  Running, Sex, Ironic

  Rollo May (1969). “Love and will”

  40 Copy quote

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

  Rollo May

  Healing, Process, Cures

  Rollo May (1998). “Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence”, p.14, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The function of the rebel is to shake the fixated mores of the rigid order of civilization; and this shaking, though painful, is necessary if the society is to be saved from boredom and apathy. Obviously I do not refer to everyone who calls himself a rebel, but only to the authentic rebel. Civilization gets its first flower from the rebel.

  Rollo May

  Flower, Order, Civilization

  Rollo May (1998). “Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence”, p.222, W. W. Norton & Company

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

  Rollo May

  Stronger, Culture, Definitions

  Rollo May (1991). “The Cry for Myth”, p.23, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Ecstasy is the accurate term for the intensity of consciousness that occurs in the creative act.

  Rollo May

  Creative, Consciousness, Intensity

  Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.48, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Terrorism and the whole drug scene are vivid examples of the fact that what persons abhor most of all in life is the possibility that they will not matter.

  Rollo May

  Drug, Vivid, Matter

  Rollo May (1985). “My Quest for Beauty”, W W Norton & Company Incorporated

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• 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.

  Rollo May

  Love, Inspirational, Passion

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• The creative process must be explored... as the expression of the normal people in the act of actualizing themselves.

  Rollo May

  Creativity, Expression, People

  Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.40, W. W. Norton & Company

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