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Courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible.

Rollo May

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.
ROLLO MAY

Genius Important Invention Need Person Society Strength Supermen Themselves
When people feel their insignificance as individual persons, they also suffer an undermining of their sense of human responsibility.
ROLLO MAY

Human Individual Responsibility Significance Suffer
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.
ROLLO MAY

Arise Between Creativity Limitation Spontaneously Tension
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.
ROLLO MAY

Achieve Anxiety Capacity Courage Freedom Meet Write
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.
ROLLO MAY

Against Around Defence Delight Good Tightly Truth Well Wound
Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.
ROLLO MAY

Capacity Development Freedom Man Old Ourselves Own Takem Hand
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.
ROLLO MAY

Artist Chaos Create Form Genesis God Immerse Into Love Order Out Themselves
The ultimate error is the refusal to look evil in the face.
ROLLO MAY

Error Evil Face Look Refusal Ultimate
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.
ROLLO MAY

Among Courage Fidelity Love Personal Value Virtue
One of the easiest ways to be irresponsible about power is to forget you have it.
ROLLO MAY

Forget Have Irresponsible One Easiest Power Way
Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one’s death.
ROLLO MAY

Adult Being Childhood Creatively Human Innocent Marry Merely Passion Youth
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 MAY

Authentically Conscious Distinguish Doing Feel Freedom Think Human Personal Quality Speak
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.
ROLLO MAY

Citizen Courage Enable Find Hero Ideal Necessary Order Own Society Wisdom
The word courage comes from the same stem as the French word Coeur, meaning “heart.” Thus just as one’s heart, by pumping blood to one’s arms, legs, and brain enables all the other physical organs to function.
ROLLO MAY

Arm Country Courage Enable Function Heart Just Leg Mean One Physical Pump Same Stem Word
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.
ROLLO MAY

Deed Establish Esteem Largely Perform Self Society Those Try Violence
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

Amazing Come Ear Guide Hear Hint Intuition Live May Peron Sensitive
Forge in the smithy of your soul.
ROLLO MAY

Fire Smithy Soul
Mass communication–wonder as it may be technologically and something to be appreciated and valued–presents us wit a serious daner, the danger of conformism, due to the fact that we all view the same things at the same time in all the cities of the country. (p. 73)
ROLLO MAY

Appreciate Communication Daner Mass May Serious Something Technologically Value Wonder
Beauty is the experience that gives us a sense of joy and a sense of peace simultaneously.
ROLLO MAY

Beauty Experience Give Joy Peace Sense Simultaneously
There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular – though profoundly mistaken – definition of myth as falsehood.
ROLLO MAY

Contemporary Culture Impoverishment Popular Profoundly Proof Strong Through
There is nobody who totally lacks the courage to change.
ROLLO MAY

Change Courage Lack Nobis Totally
Courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible.
ROLLO MAY

Being Courage Make Necessary Possible
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.
ROLLO MAY

Assumption Define Meaning Region
What anxiety means is it’s as though the world is knocking at your door, and you need to create, you need to make something, you need to do something. I think anxiety, for people who have found their own heart and their own souls, for them it is a stimulus toward creativity, toward courage. It’s what makes us human beings.
ROLLO MAY

Anxiety Create Door Knock Make Mean Need Something Work
People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day to day.
ROLLO MAY

Day Decision Dignity Make Multitude People Worth
Many people feel they are powerless to do anything effective with their lives. It takes courage to break out of the settled mold, but most find conformity more comfortable. This is why the opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it’s conformity.
ROLLO MAY

Anything Effective Feel Live Most People Powerless
Competitive individualism militates against the experience of community, and that lack of community is a centrally important factor in contemporaneous anxiety.
ROLLO MAY

Against Aleck Community Competitive Contemporary Experience Factor Important Individualism Militate

Courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible.

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Courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible.

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