Rollo May Quotes (23 Quotes)

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.

Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.

Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.

Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.

Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one's identity as a being of worth and dignity.

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.

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.

Creativity is neither the product of neurosis nor simple talent, but an intense courageous encounter with the Gods.

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 a relationship that, for the moment, is not of two isolated selves but a union.

The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.

It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.

The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.

One does not become fully human painlessly.

Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is.

Imagination is the outreaching of mind . . . . the bombardment of the conscious mind with ideas, impulses, images and every sort of psychic phenomena welling up from the preconscious. It is the capacity to dream dreams and see visions . . . .

Courage is not a virtue or value among other personal values like love or fidelity.It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personalvalues.

It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle.

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

Depression is the inability to construct a future.

Human freedom involves our capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.

Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human tenderness.

The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it's not without doubt but in spite of doubt.

Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.