Rollo May Quotes - Page 8

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The receptivity of the artist must never be confused with passivity. Receptivity is the artist's holding him or herself alive and open to hear what being may speak.

Rollo May

Confused, Artist, Listening

Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.80, W. W. Norton & Company

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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.

Rollo May

Sycophants, Status Quo, Dissent

Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.34, W. W. Norton & Company

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

Rollo May

Forgiveness, Protest, Remains

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We must be fully committed, but we must also be aware at the same time that we might possibly be wrong. People who claim to be absolutely convinced that their stand is the only right one...is a dead giveaway of unconscious doubt. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt.

Rollo May

Inspirational, Commitment, People

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There is a curiously sharp sense of joy - or perhaps better expressed, a sense of mild ecstasy - that comes when you find the particular form required by your creation.

Rollo May

Joy, Creation, Form

Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.122, W. W. Norton & Company

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In 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 May

Courage, Maturity, Simple

"Man's Search for Himself" by Rollo May, (p.191), 1953.

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Lacking positive myths to guide him, many a sensitive contemporary man finds only the model of the machine beckoning him from every side to make himself over into its image.

Rollo May

Men, Sides, Machines

"Psychology and the Human Dilemma". Book by Rollo May, p. 30, 1967.

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Insight comes at a moment of transition between work and relaxation.

Rollo May

Relaxation, Transition, Moments

Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.62, W. W. Norton & Company

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Our age is one of transition, in which the normal channels for utilizing the daimonic are denied; and such ages tend to be times when the daimonic is expressed in its most destructive form.

Rollo May

Age, Normal, Transition

Rollo May (1969). “Love and will”

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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.

Rollo May

Lazy, Coward, Blocked

Rollo May (2009). “Man's Search for Himself”, p.169, W. W. Norton & Company

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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. 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 May

Courage, Moving, Hero

Rollo May (2009). “Man's Search for Himself”, p.174, W. W. Norton & Company

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They pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean.

Rollo May

Mean, Purpose, Force

"The Courage to Create".

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A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence. Whether the meaning of existence is only what we put into life by our own individual fortitude, as Sartre would hold, or whether there is a meaning we need to discover, as Kierkegaard would state, the result is the same: myths are our way of finding this meaning and significance.

Rollo May

Giving, World, Patterns

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Those we call saints rebelled against an outmoded and inadequate form of God on the basis of their new insights into divinity.

Rollo May

Saint, Divinity, Form

Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.35, W. W. Norton & Company

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We cannot will to have insights. We cannot will to have creativity, but we can will to give ourselves to the creative experience with intensity of dedication and commitment.

Rollo May

Commitment, Creativity, Dedication

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The insight is born with anxiety, guilt and the joy and gratification that is inseparable from the actualizing of a new idea or vision.

Rollo May

Ideas, Joy, Anxiety

Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.59, W. W. Norton & Company

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I became a psychotherapist because that's where people will unburden themselves, where they will show what is in their hearts.

Rollo May

Heart, People, Shows

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The value of dreams, like ... divinations, is not that they give a specific answer, but that they open up new areas of psychic reality, shake us out of our customary ruts, and throw light on a new segment of our lives. Thus the sayings of the shrine, like dreams, were not to be received passively; the recipients had to "live" themselves into the message.

Rollo May

Dream, Reality, Light

Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.106, W. W. Norton & Company

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When one read's Kierkegaard's profound analyses of anxiety and despair or Nietzsche's amazingly acute insights into the dynamics of resentment and the guilt and hostility which accompany repressed emotional powers, one might pinch oneself to realize that one is reading works written in the last century and not some new contemporary psychological analysis.

Rollo May

Reading, Emotional, Profound

Rollo May (2015). “The Discovery of Being”, p.53, W. W. Norton & Company

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The ancient Greeks, as Plato reports, believed that we discover truth through "reminiscence," that is by "remembering," by intuitively searching into our own experience.

Rollo May

Plato, Greek, Remember

"Man's Search for Himself". Book by Rollo May, p. 214, 1953.

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

Rollo May

Lines, May, Poet

Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.69, W. W. Norton & Company

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In any discussion of religion and personality integration the question is not whether religion itself makes for health or neurosis, but what kind of religion and how is it used? Freud was in error when he held that religion is per se a compulsion neurosis. Some religion is and some is not.

Rollo May

Errors, Personality, Neurosis

Rollo May (2009). “Man's Search for Himself”, p.144, W. W. Norton & Company

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Generally, the shaking is consciously felt in its positive aspects — as the wonderful new heaven and earth which love with its miracle and mystery has suddenly produced. Love is the answer, we sing. Our Western culture seems to be engaged in a romantic - albeit desperate - conspiracy to enforce the illusion that that is all there is to eros.

Rollo May

Life, Falling In Love, Love Is

"Love & Will".

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Our thesis is that symbols and myths are an expression of man's unique self-consciousness, his capacity to transcend the immediate concrete situation and see his life in terms of 'the possible,' and that this capacity is one aspect of his experiencing himself as a being having a world.

Rollo May

Unique, Men, Self

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

Rollo May

Able, Existentialism, Readiness

Rollo May (1994). “Existence”, p.38, Jason Aronson

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Born: April 21, 1909
Died: October 22, 1994
Occupation: Psychologist
Cite this Page: Citation

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