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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)

Rollo May

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Rollo May
Age: 85 †
Born: 1909
Born: April 21
Died: 1994
Died: October 22
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Writer
Human
Toward
Inseparable
Humans
Awareness
Pauses
Self
Choose
Involves
Consciousness
Throw
Create
Response
Freedom
Weight
Upon
Based
Pause
Wish
Capacity
Stimulus

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Courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible.
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Humans have a habit of running faster when they have lost their way.
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Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all.
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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.
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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.
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Life comes from physical survival but the good life comes from what we care about.
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The rebel is committed to giving a form and pattern to the world. It is a pattern born of the indomitable thrust of the human mind, the mind which makes out of the mass of meaningless data in the world an order and a form.
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The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt but in spite of doubt.
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The daimonic is any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person. Sex and eros, anger and rage, and the craving for power are examples. The daimonic can be either creative or destructive and is normally both.
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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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Hate is not the opposite of love apathy is.
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By whatever name one calls it, genuine creativity is characterized by an intensity of awareness, a heightened consciousness.
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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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Anxiety is essential to the human condition. The confrontation with anxiety can relieve us from boredom, sharpen the sensitivity and assure the presence of tension that is necessary to preserve human existence.
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Unconscious insights or answers to problems that come in reverie do not come hit or miss... they pertain to those areas in which the person consciously has worked laboriously and with dedication.
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Real freedom is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose.
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It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.
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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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Purpose in the human being is a much more complex phenomenon than what used to be called will power.
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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.
Rollo May