People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.
ROLLO MAYApathy adds up, in the long run, to cowardice.
More Rollo May Quotes
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Understanding and love require a wisdom that comes only with age.
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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 self-actualization, or will it destroy us?
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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.
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The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one’s own convictions – not obstinately or defiantly
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Creativity is neither the product of neurosis nor simple talent, but an intense courageous encounter with the Gods.
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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.
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One of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety is that we are forced to become aware of ourselves.
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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.
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Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.
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The word courage comes from the same stem as the French word Coeur, meaning “heart.” Thus just as one’s heart, by pumping blood to one’s arms, legs, and brain enables all the other physical organs to function.
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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.
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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.
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Real freedom is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose.
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To believe fully and at the same moment to have doubts is not at all a contradiction: it presupposes a greater respect for truth, an awareness that truth always goes beyond anything that can be said or done at any given moment.
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Ecstasy is the accurate term for the intensity of consciousness that occurs in the creative act.
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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.
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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.
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To love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive – to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and an intensity of consciousness we did not know was possible before
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Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence.
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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.
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Apathy adds up, in the long run, to cowardice.
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One central need in life is to fulfill its own potential.
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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.
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Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is.
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Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don’t find themselves at all.
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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.
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