Quotes by Rollo May

“To say a person is a coward has no more meaning than to say he is lazy: It simply tells us that some vital potentiality is unrealized or blocked.”

“Courage isrequired 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 himsel...”

“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 problems with perspective.”

“If the will remains in protest it stays dependent on that which it is protesting against.”

“Hate is not the opposite of love apathy is.”

“If you do not express your own original ideas if you do not listen to your own being you will have betrayed yourself.”

“In my clinical experience the greatest block to a person's development is his having to take on a way of life which is not rooted in his own powers.”

“I think Dostoevsky was right that every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture where he says this is me and the damned world can go to hell.”

“The most effective way to ensure the value of the future is to confront the present courageously and constructively.”

“It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths.”

“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...”

“Artistic symbols and myths speak out of the primordial, preconscious realm of the mind which is powerful and chaotic. Both symbol and myth are ways of bringing order and form into this chaos.”

“But there also seems to be in our culture a curious cautiousness—“You’ll get these abundant gratifications only if you don’t feel too much, don’t let on you want too much.” The result is that, inst...”

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

“When we are dealing with human beings, no truth has reality by itself; it is always dependent upon the reality of the immediate relationship.”

“Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it.”

“One must have at least a readiness to love the other person, broadly speaking, if one is to be able to understand him.”

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

“Tenderness emerges from the fact that the two persons longing as all individuals do to overcome the separateness and isolation to which we are all heir because we are individuals can participate in...”

“Courage is the basic virtue for everyone so long as he continues to grow to move ahead.”