“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.”

Freedom does not come automatically; it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound; it must be achieved each day.

There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular – though profoundly mistaken – definition of myth as falsehood.

Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don’t find themselves at all.

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.

One of the easiest ways to be irresponsible about power is to forget you have it.

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.

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.

I learned that healing and cure are active processes in which I myself needed to participate.

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.

Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.

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.

Creativity is neither the product of neurosis nor simple talent, but an intense courageous encounter with the Gods.

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/

However it may be confounded or covered up or counterfeited, this elemental capacity to fight against injustice remains the distinguishing characteristic of human beings.

One of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety is that we are forced to become aware of ourselves.

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.