Rollo May Quotes - Page 6

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

Rollo May

Discovery, Interesting, Existentialism

Rollo May (1991). “The Cry for Myth”, p.25, W. W. Norton & Company

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Creativity is the result of a struggle between vitality and form. As anyone who has tried to write a sonnet or scan poetry, is aware, the form ideally do not take away from the creativity but may add to it.

Rollo May

Struggle, Writing, Creativity

Rollo May (2011). “Love & Will”, p.320, W. W. Norton & Company

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A historical perspective can also help free us from the ever-present danger -- especially at danger in the social sciences -- of absolutizing a theory or method which is actually relative to the fact that we live at a given moment in time in the development of our particular culture.

Rollo May

Perspective, Historical, Facts

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Dogmatism of all kinds--scientific, economic, moral, as well as political--are threatened by the creative freedom of the artist. This is necessarily and inevitably so. We cannot escape our anxiety over the fact that the artists together with creative persons of all sorts, are the possible destroyer of our nicely ordered systems. (p. 76)

Rollo May

Artist, Creative, Anxiety

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The rebel is committed to giving a form and pattern to the world. It is a pattern born of the indomitable thrust of the human mind, the mind which makes out of the mass of meaningless data in the world an order and a form.

Rollo May

Data, Order, Giving

Rollo May (1998). “Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence”, p.237, W. W. Norton & Company

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The poet, like the lover, is a menace on the assembly line.

Rollo May

Lines, Lovers, Poet

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Unconscious insights or answers to problems that come in reverie do not come hit or miss... they pertain to those areas in which the person consciously has worked laboriously and with dedication.

Rollo May

Dedication, Missing, Answers

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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.

Rollo May

Passion, Creativity, Childhood

Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.31, W. W. Norton & Company

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When I fall in love, I feel more valuable and I treat myself with more care. We have all observed the hesitant adolescent, uncertain of himself, who, when he or she falls in love, suddenly walks with a certain inner assuredness and confidence, a mien which seems to say, "You are looking at somebody now." For this inner sense of worth that comes with being in love does not seem to depend essentially on whether the love is returned or not.

Rollo May

Life, Falling In Love, Being In Love

"Love & Will".

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... what the artist or creative scientist feels is not anxiety or fear; it is joy. I use the word in contrast to happiness or pleasure. The artist, at the moment of creating, does not experience gratification or satisfaction... Rather, it is joy, joy defined as the emotion that goes with heightened consciousness, the mood that accompanies the experience of actualizing one's own potentialities.

Rollo May

Creativity, Artist, Creating

Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.45, W. W. Norton & Company

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The daimonic is any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person. Sex and eros, anger and rage, and the craving for power are examples. The daimonic can be either creative or destructive and is normally both.

Rollo May

Sex, Creative, Example

Rollo May (1969). “Love and will”

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Physical courage in whatever scene ... seems to hinge on whether the individual can feel he is fighting for others as well as himself.

Rollo May

Fighting, Scene, Individual

Rollo May (1998). “Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence”, p.176, W. W. Norton & Company

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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

Courage, Responsibility, Decision

Rollo May (2009). “Man's Search for Himself”, p.173, W. W. Norton & Company

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No one can separate themselves from one's social group and remain healthy, because the very structure of personality is dependent on the community.

Rollo May

Personality, Community, Healthy

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The daimonic refers to the power of nature rather than the superego, and is beyond good and evil. Nor is it man's 'recall to himself' as Heidegger and later Fromm have argued, for its source lies in those realms where the self is rooted in natural forces which go beyond the self and are felt as the grasp of fate upon us. The daimonic arises from the ground of being rather than the self as such.

Rollo May

Lying, Fate, Men

Rollo May (1969). “Love and will”

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Neither Kierkegaard nor Nietzsche had the slightest interest in starting a movement – or a new system, a thought which would indeed have offended them. Both proclaimed, in Nietzsche's phrase, Follow not me, but you!

Rollo May

Phrases, Movement, Starting

Rollo May (2015). “The Discovery of Being”, p.76, W. W. Norton & Company

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Artistic symbols and myths speak out of the primordial, preconscious realm of the mind which is powerful and chaotic. Both symbol and myth are ways of bringing order and form into this chaos.

Rollo May

Powerful, Speaks Out, Order

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When inward life dries up, when feeling decreases and apathy increases, when one cannot affect or even genuinely touch another person, violence flares up as a daimonic necessity for contact, a mad drive forcing touch in the most direct way possible.

Rollo May

Flare Up, Mad, Feelings

"Love and Will". Book by Rollo May, Ch. 1: Introduction: Our Schizoid World, p. 31, 1969.

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We receive love — from our children as well as others — not in proportion to our demands or sacrifices or needs, but roughly in proportion to our own capacity to love.

Rollo May

Love, Capacity To Love, Capacity

"Man's Search for Himself".

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

Rollo May

Risk, Intimacy, Self Actualization

Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.17, W. W. Norton & Company

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Now, I believe in life, and I believe in the joy of human existence, but these things cannot be experienced except as we also face the despair, also face the anxiety that every human being has to face if he lives with any creativity at all.

Rollo May

Believe, Creativity, Joy

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Man is the "ethical animal" ethical in potentiality even if, unfortunately, not in actuality. His capacity for ethical judgment like freedom, reason and the other unique characteristics of the human being is based upon his consciousness of himself.

Rollo May

Unique, Men, Animal

Rollo May (2009). “Man's Search for Himself”, p.130, W. W. Norton & Company

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It may sound surprising when I say, on the basis of my own clinical practice as well as that of my psychological and psychiatric colleagues, that the chief problem of people in the middle decade of the twentieth century is emptiness.

Rollo May

Practice, People, May

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

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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.

Rollo May

Struggle, Issues, Self

Rollo May (1969). “Love and will”

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Existential psychotherapy is the movement which, although standing on one side on the scientific analysis owed chiefly to the genius of Freud , also brings back into the picture the understanding of man on the deeper and broader level man as the being who is human. It is based on the assumption that it is possible to have a science of man which does not fragmentize man and destroy his humanity at the same moment as it studies him. It unites science and ontology .

Rollo May

Men, Humanity, Understanding

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

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Born: April 21, 1909
Died: October 22, 1994
Occupation: Psychologist
Cite this Page: Citation

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