If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.
ROLLO MAYIf you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.
ROLLO MAYIntimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable.
ROLLO MAYMany people feel they are powerless to do anything effective with their lives. It takes courage to break out of the settled mold, but most find conformity more comfortable. This is why the opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it’s conformity.
ROLLO MAYHumor is the healthy way of feeling “distance” between one’s self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one’s problem with perspective.
ROLLO MAYThe ultimate error is the refusal to look evil in the face.
ROLLO MAYCreativity is the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his world.
ROLLO MAYMany people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don’t find themselves at all.
ROLLO MAYReligion 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 MAYSuffering is nature’s way of indicating a mistaken attitude or way of behavior, and to the nonegocentric person every moment of suffering is the opportunity for growth. People should rejoice in suffering, strange as it sounds, for this is a sign of the availability of energy to transform their characters.
ROLLO MAYThe danger always exists that our technology will serve as a buffer between us and nature, a block between us and the deeper dimensions of our own experience.
ROLLO MAYLife comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.
ROLLO MAYThis is what our society needs – not new ideas and inventions; important as these are, and not geniuses and supermen, but persons who can be, that is, persons who have a center of strength within themselves.
ROLLO MAYCourage 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 MAYIntimacy 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 self-actualization, or will it destroy us?
ROLLO MAYOne of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety is that we are forced to become aware of ourselves.
ROLLO MAYAll our feelings, like the artist’s paints and brush, are ways of communicating and sharing something meaningful from us to the world.
ROLLO MAY