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.
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.
More Rollo May Quotes
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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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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.
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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.
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Many 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.
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A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.
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It is amazing how many hints and guides and intuitions for living come to the sensitive person who has ears to hear what his body is saying.
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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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Mass communication–wonder as it may be technologically and something to be appreciated and valued–presents us wit a serious daner, the danger of conformism, due to the fact that we all view the same things at the same time in all the cities of the country. (p. 73)
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It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.
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Courage 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.
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Creativity is the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his world.
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Competitive individualism militates against the experience of community, and that lack of community is a centrally important factor in contemporaneous anxiety.
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Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one’s identity as a being of worth and dignity.
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All people are struggling to be creative in some way, and the artist is the one who has succeeded in this task of life.
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There is no authentic inner freedom that does not, sooner or later, also affect and change human history.
ROLLO MAY