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)
Rollo MayInner sense of worth that comes with being in love does not seem to depend essentially on whether the love is returned or not.
Rollo MayGood 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 potentialities that transcend intellectual games and ego-preserving strategies.
Rollo MayThe mature person becomes able to differentiate feelings into as many nuances, strong and passionate experiences, or delicate and sensitive ones, as in the different passages of music in a symphony. Unfortunately, many of us have feelings limited like notes in a bugle call.
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 MayCare is a state in which something does matter; care is the opposite of apathy. Care is the necessary source of eros, the source of human tenderness.
Rollo MayHuman 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 ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness. (p. 100)
Rollo MayA historical perspective can also help free us from the ever-present danger -- especially at danger in the social sciences -- of absolutizing a theory or method which is actually relative to the fact that we live at a given moment in time in the development of our particular culture.
Rollo MayCompetitive individualism militates against the experience of community, and that lack of community is a centrally important factor in contemporaneous anxiety.
Rollo MayFortunately, 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.
Rollo MayHeroes are necessary in order to enable the citizens to find their own ideals, courage and wisdom in the society. The hero carries our hopes, our aspirations, our ideals, our beliefs. In the deepest sense the hero is created by us; he or she is born collectively as our own myth. This is what makes heroism so important: it reflects our own sense of identity and from this our own heroism is molded.
Rollo MayWhatever sphere we may be in, there is a profound joy in the realization that we are helping to form the structure of the new world. This is creative courage, however minor or fortuitous our creations may be.
Rollo MayThere 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.
Rollo MayCreativity is neither the product of neurosis nor simple talent, but an intense courageous encounter with the Gods.
Rollo MayNo one can separate themselves from one's social group and remain healthy, because the very structure of personality is dependent on the community.
Rollo MayCourage is not a virtue of value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage our love pales into mere dependency. Without courage our fidelity becomes conformism.
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 MayCourage is the capacity to meet the anxiety which arises as one achieves freedom. It is the willingness to differentiate, to move from the protecting realms of parental dependence to new levels of freedom and integration.
Rollo MayI became a psychotherapist because that's where people will unburden themselves, where they will show what is in their hearts.
Rollo MayPoets may be delightful creatures in the meadow or the garret, but they are menaces on the assembly line.
Rollo MayVanity 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.
Rollo MayThe 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.
Rollo MayConsciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations.
Rollo MayIf the will remains in protest, it stays dependent on that which it is protesting against.
Rollo MayA dynamic struggle goes on within a person between what he or she consciously thinks on the one hand and, on the other, some insight, some perspective that is struggling to be born.
Rollo MayScience, Nietzsche had warned, is becoming a factory, and the result will be ethical nihilism.
Rollo MayIt is well to remind ourselves that anxiety signifies a conflict, and so long as a conflict is going on, a constructive solution is possible.
Rollo MayCreativity 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.
Rollo MayIn any age courage is the simple virtue needed for a human being to traverse the rocky road from infancy to maturity of personality. But in an age of anxiety, an age of herd morality and personal isolation, courage is a sine qua non. In periods when the mores of the society were more consistent guides, the individual was more firmly cushioned in his crises of development; but in times of transition like ours, the individual is thrown on his own at an earlier age and for a longer period.
Rollo MayWhat Kierkegaard said about love is also true of creativity: every person must start at the beginning.
Rollo MayOne of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety is that we are forced to become aware of ourselves.
Rollo MayIt 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. Strange as it sounds, steady, patient growth in freedom is probably the most difficult task of all, requiring the greatest courage. Thus if the term "hero" is used in this discussion at all, it must refer not to the special acts of outstanding persons, but to the heroic element potentially in every man.
Rollo MayFinding the center of strenghth within ourselves is in the long run best contribution we can do to our fellow man
Rollo MayMemory is not just the imprint of the past time upon us; it is the keeper of what is meaningful for our deepest hopes and fears.
Rollo MayJoy is the zest that you get out of using your talents, your understanding, the totality of your being, for great aims...That's the kind of feeling that goes with creativity. That's why I say the courage to create. Creation does not come out of simply what you're born with. That must be united with your courage, both of which cause anxiety, but also great joy.
Rollo May