What if imagination and art are not frosting at all, but the fountainhead of human experience?
ROLLO MAYWhat if imagination and art are not frosting at all, but the fountainhead of human experience?
ROLLO MAYCourage is required not only in a person’s occasional crucial decision for his own freedom, but in the little hour-to-hour decisions which place the bricks in the structure of his building of himself into a person who acts with freedom and responsibility.
ROLLO MAYIn order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.
ROLLO MAYDeeds 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 MAYFinding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow men. … One person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on panic among people around him.
ROLLO MAYUnderstanding and love require a wisdom that comes only with age.
ROLLO MAYThe 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.
ROLLO MAYTo 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.
ROLLO MAYWe 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 MAYCreativity 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 MAYOne central need in life is to fulfill its own potential.
ROLLO MAYIt is dangerous to know, but it is more dangerous not to know.
ROLLO MAYEcstasy is the accurate term for the intensity of consciousness that occurs in the creative act.
ROLLO MAYArtists 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 MAYPeople attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.
ROLLO MAYWhat 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