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

Rollo May

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Rollo May
Age: 85 †
Born: 1909
Born: April 21
Died: 1994
Died: October 22
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Writer
Humans
Dealing
Always
Dependent
Beings
Relationship
Upon
Reality
Existentialism
Truth
Existential
Human
Immediate

More quotes by Rollo May

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Now, I believe in life, and I believe in the joy of human existence, but these things cannot be experienced except as we also face the despair, also face the anxiety that every human being has to face if he lives with any creativity at all.
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Anxiety is an even better teacher than reality, for one can temporarily evade reality by avoiding the distasteful situation but anxiety is a source of education always present because one carries it within.
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Evil, in this system of ethics, is that which tears apart, shuts out the other person, raises barriers, sets people against each other.
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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.
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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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Whatever 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.
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By whatever name one calls it, genuine creativity is characterized by an intensity of awareness, a heightened consciousness.
Rollo May
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The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free.
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The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.
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The ultimate error is the refusal to look evil in the face.
Rollo May
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Human 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)
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Creativity occurs in an act of encounter and is to be understood with this encounter as its center.
Rollo May
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We must always base our commitment in the center of our own being, or else no commitment will be ultimately authentic.
Rollo May
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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.
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However it may be confounded or covered up or counterfeited, this elemental capacity to fight against injustice remains the distinguishing characteristic of human beings.
Rollo May
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It is dangerous to know, but it is more dangerous not to know.
Rollo May
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Every authentic artist is engaged in this creating of the conscience of the race, even though he or she may be unaware of the fact.
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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.
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It may sound surprising when I say, on the basis of my own clinical practice as well as that of my psychological and psychiatric colleagues, that the chief problem of people in the middle decade of the twentieth century is emptiness.
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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