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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.

Rollo May

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

More quotes by Rollo May

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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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The creative act arises out of the struggle of human beings with and against that which limits them.
Rollo May
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Creativity is neither the product of neurosis nor simple talent, but an intense courageous encounter with the Gods.
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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.
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Real freedom is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose.
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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.
Rollo May
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Ecstasy is the accurate term for the intensity of consciousness that occurs in the creative act.
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Humans have a habit of running faster when they have lost their way.
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Violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness.
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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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It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths.
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To love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive - to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and an intensity of consciousness we did not know was possible before
Rollo May
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The ultimate error is the refusal to look evil in the face.
Rollo May
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Tools and techniques ought to be an extension of consciousness, but they can just as easily be a protection from consciousness. Then the tools become defence mechanisms... against the unconscious.
Rollo May
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Indeed, compulsive and rigid moralism arises in given persons precisely as the result of a lack of sense of being. Rigid moralism is a compensatory mechanism by which the individual persuades himself to take over the external sanctions because he has no fundamental assurance that his own choices have any sanction of their own
Rollo May
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Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant.
Rollo May
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Care is a state in which something does matter care is the opposite of apathy. Care is the necessary source of eros, the source of human tenderness.
Rollo May
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Creativity is the result of a struggle between vitality and form. As anyone who has tried to write a sonnet or scan poetry, is aware, the form ideally do not take away from the creativity but may add to it.
Rollo May
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I learned that healing and cure are active processes in which I myself needed to participate.
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)
Rollo May