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.
ROLLO MAYCompetitive individualism militates against the experience of community, and that lack of community is a centrally important factor in contemporaneous anxiety.
More Rollo May Quotes
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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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One does not become fully human painlessly.
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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 neither the product of neurosis nor simple talent, but an intense courageous encounter with the Gods.
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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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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 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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Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is.
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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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All our feelings, like the artist’s paints and brush, are ways of communicating and sharing something meaningful from us to the world.
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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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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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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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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.
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The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free.
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