Quote

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.

Rollo May

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Rollo May
Age: 85 †
Born: 1909
Born: April 21
Died: 1994
Died: October 22
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Writer
Creativity
River
Forcing
Art
Latter
Spontaneity
Form
Arise
Arises
May
Essential
Banks
Work
Rivers
Limitations
Like
Essentials
Limitation
Forms
Poem
Various
Tension

More quotes by Rollo May

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Physical courage in whatever scene ... seems to hinge on whether the individual can feel he is fighting for others as well as himself.
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Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations.
Rollo May
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If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.
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Our powerful hunger for myth is a hunger for community. The person without a myth is a person without a home...To be a member of one's community is to share in its myths.
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I learned that healing and cure are active processes in which I myself needed to participate.
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Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us.
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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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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
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There is no meaningful yes unless the individual could also have said no.
Rollo May
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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
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When you are completely absorbed or caught up in something, you become oblivious to things around you, or to the passage of time. It is this absorption in what you are doing that frees your unconscious and releases your creative imagination.
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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.
Rollo May
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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.
Rollo May
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Inner sense of worth that comes with being in love does not seem to depend essentially on whether the love is returned or not.
Rollo May
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Violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness.
Rollo May
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There is nobody who totally lacks the courage to change.
Rollo May
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It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.
Rollo May
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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.
Rollo May
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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.
Rollo May
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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.
Rollo May