Depression is the inability to construct a future.
ROLLO MAYThe first thing necessary for a constructive dealing with time is to learn to live in the reality of the present moment. For psychologically speaking, this present moment is all we have.
More Rollo May Quotes
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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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Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.
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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.
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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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Science, Nietzsche had warned, is becoming a factory, and the result will be ethical nihilism.
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The 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.
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People only change when it becomes too dangerous to stay the way they are.
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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.
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The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free.
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Courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible.
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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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Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.
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Suffering 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.
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Violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness.
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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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Good art wounds as well as delights. It must, because our defenses against the truth are wound so tightly around us. But as art chips away at our defenses, it also opens us to healing potentialities that transcend intellectual games and ego-preserving strategies.
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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.
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Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is.
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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.
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Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.
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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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This 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.
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This is what makes heroism so important: it reflects our own sense of identity and from this our own heroism is molded.
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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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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.
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Creativity is the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his world.
ROLLO MAY