It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way; and we grasp more fiercely at research, statistics, and technical aids in sex when we have lost the values and meaning of love.
ROLLO MAYThe mature person becomes able to differentiate feelings into as many nuances, strong and passionate experiences, or delicate and sensitive ones, as in the different passages of music in a symphony. Unfortunately, many of us have feelings limited like notes in a bugle call.
More Rollo May Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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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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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Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.
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The first thing necessary for a constructive dealing with time is to learn to live in the reality of the present moment. For psychologically speaking, this present moment is all we have.
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Vanity and narcissism – the compulsive need to be admired and praised – undermine one’s courage, for one then fights on someone else’s conviction rather than one’s own.
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Understanding and love require a wisdom that comes only with age.
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People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.
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Therapy isn’t curing somebody of something; it is a means of helping a person explore himself, his life, his consciousness. My purpose as a therapist is to find out what it means to be human.
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The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free.
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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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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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Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is.
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Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable.
ROLLO MAY