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
Various
Tension
Creativity
River
Forcing
Art
Latter
Spontaneity
Form
Arise
Arises
May
Essential
Banks
Work
Rivers
Limitations
Like
Essentials
Limitation
Forms
Poem

More quotes by Rollo May

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We receive love — from our children as well as others — not in proportion to our demands or sacrifices or needs, but roughly in proportion to our own capacity to love.
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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
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There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular - though profoundly mistaken - definition of myth as falsehood.
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Creativity is the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his world.
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Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.
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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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Creativity occurs in an act of encounter and is to be understood with this encounter as its center.
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Poets may be delightful creatures in the meadow or the garret, but they are menaces on the assembly line.
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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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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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It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.
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Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable.
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Real freedom is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose.
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One does not become fully human painlessly.
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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
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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.
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Good art wounds as well as delights. It must, because our defenses against the truth are wound so tightly around us. But as art chips away at our defenses, it also opens us to healing potentialities that transcend intellectual games and ego-preserving strategies.
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There is no authentic inner freedom that does not, sooner or later, also affect and change human history.
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Creativity is a yearning for immortality
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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