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Terrorism and the whole drug scene are vivid examples of the fact that what persons abhor most of all in life is the possibility that they will not matter.

Rollo May

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Rollo May
Age: 85 †
Born: 1909
Born: April 21
Died: 1994
Died: October 22
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Writer
Whole
Drug
Life
Possibility
Scene
Example
Abhor
Fact
Examples
Facts
Existential
Persons
Vivid
Matter
Terrorism

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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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Humans have a habit of running faster when they have lost their way.
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However it may be confounded or covered up or counterfeited, this elemental capacity to fight against injustice remains the distinguishing characteristic of human beings.
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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.
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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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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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Real freedom is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose.
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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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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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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.
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Ecstasy is the accurate term for the intensity of consciousness that occurs in the creative act.
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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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They pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean.
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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.
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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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Creativity is the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his world.
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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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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.
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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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One does not become fully human painlessly.
Rollo May