I learned that healing and cure are active processes in which I myself needed to participate.
ROLLO MAYThere is no authentic inner freedom that does not, sooner or later, also affect and change human history.
More Rollo May Quotes
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There is nobody who totally lacks the courage to change.
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In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.
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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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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 person can meet anxiety to the extent that his values are stronger than the threat.
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Does not the possibility or the power to do something about the situation at hand confer on one the responsibility to do it?
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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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Real freedom is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose.
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This personal freedom to think and feel and speak authentically and to be conscious of so doing is the quality that distinguishes us as human.
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When I fall in love, I feel more valuable and I treat myself with more care. We have all observed the hesitant adolescent, uncertain of himself, who, when he or she falls in love, suddenly walks with a certain inner assuredness and confidence/
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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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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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So courage makes possible all the psychological virtues. Without courage other values wither away into mere facsimiles of virtue.
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Beauty is the experience that gives us a sense of joy and a sense of peace simultaneously.
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Finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow men. … One person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on panic among people around him.
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However it may be confounded or covered up or counterfeited, this elemental capacity to fight against injustice remains the distinguishing characteristic of human beings.
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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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Science, Nietzsche had warned, is becoming a factory, and the result will be ethical nihilism.
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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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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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Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is.
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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.
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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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Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.
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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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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.
ROLLO MAY