Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.
ROLLO MAYThe 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.
More Rollo May Quotes
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Suffering is nature’s way of indicating a mistaken attitude or way of behavior, and to the nonegocentric person every moment of suffering is the opportunity for growth. People should rejoice in suffering, strange as it sounds, for this is a sign of the availability of energy to transform their characters.
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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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The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.
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To believe fully and at the same moment to have doubts is not at all a contradiction: it presupposes a greater respect for truth, an awareness that truth always goes beyond anything that can be said or done at any given moment.
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One does not become fully human painlessly.
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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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Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don’t find themselves at all.
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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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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/
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Real freedom is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose.
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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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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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There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular – though profoundly mistaken – definition of myth as falsehood.
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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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It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.
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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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A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.
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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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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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People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day to day.
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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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Understanding and love require a wisdom that comes only with age.
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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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Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.
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Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One’s religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for.
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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.
ROLLO MAY