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It is well to remind ourselves that anxiety signifies a conflict, and so long as a conflict is going on, a constructive solution is possible.

Rollo May

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.
ROLLO MAY

Achieve Anxiety Capacity Courage Freedom Meet Write
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.
ROLLO MAY

Against Around Defence Delight Good Tightly Truth Well Wound
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.
ROLLO MAY

Acorn Automatic Become Commitment Growth Mean Necessary Oak
Anxiety is essential to the human condition. The confrontation with anxiety can relieve us from boredom, sharpen the sensitivity and assure the presence of tension that is necessary to preserve human existence.
ROLLO MAY

Anxiety Condition Essential Human
Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant.
ROLLO MAY

Deed Establish Esteem Largely Perform Self Society Those Try Violence
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.
ROLLO MAY

Anything Effective Feel Live Most People Powerless
What anxiety means is it’s as though the world is knocking at your door, and you need to create, you need to make something, you need to do something. I think anxiety, for people who have found their own heart and their own souls, for them it is a stimulus toward creativity, toward courage. It’s what makes us human beings.
ROLLO MAY

Anxiety Create Door Knock Make Mean Need Something Work
Competitive individualism militates against the experience of community, and that lack of community is a centrally important factor in contemporaneous anxiety.
ROLLO MAY

Against Aleck Community Competitive Contemporary Experience Factor Important Individualism Militate
Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, “This is me and the world be damned!” Leaders have always been the ones to stand against the society – Socrates, Christ, Freud, all the way down the line.
ROLLO MAY

Against Always Culture Down Every Human Being Leader Line One Point Stand World
When we are dealing with human beings, no truth has reality by itself; it is always dependent upon the reality of the immediate relationship.
ROLLO MAY

Always Being Dependent Dual Human Itself Reality Truth Upon
The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one’s own convictions – not obstinately or defiantly
ROLLO MAY

Age Capacity Conformity Conviction Courage Hallmark Obstinately One Our Own Stand
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 Crucial Decision Freedom Hour Little Occasional Only Own Person Place REquired
When you are completely absorbed or caught up in something, you become oblivious to things around you, or to the passage of time. It is this absorption in what you are doing that frees your unconscious and releases your creative imagination.
ROLLO MAY

Absorb Around Become Caught Completely Obvious Something Thing You
The essence of being human is that, in the brief moment we exist on this spinning planet, we can love some persons and some things, in spite of the fact that time and death will ultimately claim us all.
ROLLO MAY

Being Brief Essence Exist Human Moment Planet Spinning
Apathy adds up, in the long run, to cowardice.
ROLLO MAY

Add Apathy Cowardice Long Run
One of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety is that we are forced to become aware of ourselves.
ROLLO MAY

Age Anxiety Aware Become Blessing Few Fierce Living One Ourselbeevs

It is well to remind ourselves that anxiety signifies a conflict, and so long as a conflict is going on, a constructive solution is possible.

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It is well to remind ourselves that anxiety signifies a conflict, and so long as a conflict is going on, a constructive solution is possible.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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