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.
ROLLO MAYPeople attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day to day.
More Rollo May Quotes
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A mien which seems to say, “You are looking at somebody now.” For this inner sense of worth that comes with being in love does not seem to depend essentially on whether the love is returned or not.
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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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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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One central need in life is to fulfill its own potential.
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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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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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If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.
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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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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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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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When people feel their insignificance as individual persons, they also suffer an undermining of their sense of human responsibility.
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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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Recall how often in human history the saint and the rebel have be the same person. (p. 35)
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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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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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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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Creativity is the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his world.
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There is no authentic inner freedom that does not, sooner or later, also affect and change human history.
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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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Artists love to immerse themselves in chaos in order to put it into form, just as God created form out of chaos in Genesis. Forever unsatisfied with the mundane, the apathetic, the conventional, they always push on to newer worlds.
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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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Humor is the healthy way of feeling “distance” between one’s self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one’s problem with perspective.
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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.
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Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.
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The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free.
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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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