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One does not become fully human painlessly.

Rollo May

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Rollo May
Age: 85 †
Born: 1909
Born: April 21
Died: 1994
Died: October 22
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Writer
Humans
Painlessly
Fully
Reality
Become
Doe
Human

More quotes by Rollo May

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Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations.
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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.
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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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The word courage comes from the same stem as the French word Coeur, meaning heart. Thus just as one's heart, by pumping blood to one's arms, legs, and brain enables all the other physical organs to function, so courage makes possible all the psychological virtues. Without courage other values wither away into mere facsimiles of virtue.
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There is no meaningful yes unless the individual could also have said no.
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In any discussion of religion and personality integration the question is not whether religion itself makes for health or neurosis, but what kind of religion and how is it used? Freud was in error when he held that religion is per se a compulsion neurosis. Some religion is and some is not.
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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The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free.
Rollo May
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Our thesis is that symbols and myths are an expression of man's unique self-consciousness, his capacity to transcend the immediate concrete situation and see his life in terms of 'the possible,' and that this capacity is one aspect of his experiencing himself as a being having a world.
Rollo May
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It is infinitely safer to know that the man at the top has his doubts, as you and I have ours, yet has the courage to move ahead in spite of these doubts.
Rollo May
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They pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean.
Rollo May
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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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Freedom does not come automatically it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound it must be achieved each day.
Rollo May
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Creativity is a yearning for immortality
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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Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us.
Rollo May
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A historical perspective can also help free us from the ever-present danger -- especially at danger in the social sciences -- of absolutizing a theory or method which is actually relative to the fact that we live at a given moment in time in the development of our particular culture.
Rollo May
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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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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.
Rollo May
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Life comes from physical survival but the good life comes from what we care about.
Rollo May