Quotes by Rollo May

“A fear is a reaction to a specific danger, to which the individual can make a specific adjustment. But what characterizes anxiety is the feeling of diffuseness and uncertainty and the experience of...”

“Finding 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 effec...”

“It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when they have lost their way.”

“We in our age are faced with a strange paradox. Never before have we had so much information in bits and pieces flooded upon us by radio and television and satellite, yet never before have we had s...”

“Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create oursel...”

“Everyone belongs to a society, whether he wishes it or not, whether he chooses it or not, whether he contributes constructively to its development or does the reverse. Community, on the contrary, i...”

“Every authentic artist is engaged in this creating of the conscience of the race, even though he or she may be unaware of the fact. The artist is not a moralist by conscious intention, but is conce...”

“But there also seems to be in our culture a curious cautiousnessYoull get these abundant gratifications only if you dont feel too much, dont let on you want too much. The result is that, instead of...”

“It is highly significant and indeed almost a rule, that moral courage has its source in such identification through one's own sensitivity with suffering of one's fellow human beings." (p. 16-17)”

“Courage is not a virtue or value among other personal values like love o fidelity. It is the foundations that underlies and gives reality to all other virtue and personal values. (p. 13)”

“Whereas moral courage is the righting of wrongs, creative courage, in contrast, is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built.”

“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 potentialitie...”

“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.”

“Poets may be delightful creatures in the meadow or the garret, but they are menaces on the assembly line.”

“Escapist creativity is that which lacks encounter.”

“By the creative act, however, we are able to reach beyond our own death. This is why creativity is so important and why we need to confront the problem of the relationship between creativity and de...”

“The concept of encounter also enables us to make clearer the important distinction between talent and creativity. Talent may well have its neurological correlates and can be studied as given to a p...”

“These poets and other creative persons are the ones who express being itself, he held. As I would put it, these are the ones who enlarge human consciousness. Their creativity is the most basic mani...”

“The battle with the gods thus hinges on our own mortality! Creativity is a yearning for immortality.”

“Because it is possible to create creating ones self, willing to be ones self, as well as creating in all the innumerable daily activities (and these are two phases of the same process) one has an...”