"Memory 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."
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Quote collection
Rollo May quotes (page 2 of 11)
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"It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way; and we grasp more fiercely at research, statistics, and technical aids in sex when we have lost the values and meaning of love."
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"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."
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"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 effect on panic among people around him. This is what our society needs - not new ideas and inventions; important as these are, and not geniuses and supermen, but persons who can be, that is, persons who have a center of strength within themselves."
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"One does not become fully human painlessly."
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"In religion, it is not the sycophants or those who cling most faithfully to the status quo who are ultimately praised. It is the insurgents."
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"Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence."
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"One of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety is that we are forced to become aware of ourselves."
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"There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular - though profoundly mistaken - definition of myth as falsehood."
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"Heroes 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."
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"Beauty is the experience that gives us a sense of joy and a sense of peace simultaneously."
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"The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free."
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"Science, Nietzsche had warned, is becoming a factory, and the result will be ethical nihilism."
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"What is courage? This courage will not be the opposite of despair. We shall often be faced with despair, as indeed every sensitive person has been during the last several decades in this country. Hence Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Camus and Sartre have proclaimed that courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair."
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"Many people feel they are powerless to do anything effective with their lives. It takes courage to break out of the settled mold, but most find conformity more comfortable. This is why the opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it's conformity."
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"Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us. Like a chemical mixture, if one of us is changed, both of us will be. Will we grow in self-actualization, or will it destroy us? The one thing we can be certain of is that if we let ourselves fully into the relationship for good or evil, we will not come out unaffected."
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"Recall how often in human history the saint and the rebel have be the same person. (p. 35)"
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"Courage 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."
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"People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day to day."
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"Suffering is nature's way of indicating a mistaken attitude or way of behavior, and to the nonegocentric person every moment of suffering is the opportunity for growth. People should rejoice in suffering, strange as it sounds, for this is a sign of the availability of energy to transform their characters."
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