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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.

Rollo May

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Rollo May
Age: 85 †
Born: 1909
Born: April 21
Died: 1994
Died: October 22
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Writer
Center
Ultimately
Commitment
Inspirational
Else
Must
Always
Authentic
Base

More quotes by Rollo May

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That because of this interplay of conscious and unconscious factors in guilt and the impossibility of legalistic blame, we are forced into an attitude of acceptance of the universal human situation and a recognition of the participation of every one of us in man's inhumanity to man.
Rollo May
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It is dangerous to know, but it is more dangerous not to know.
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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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There is no authentic inner freedom that does not, sooner or later, also affect and change human history.
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Apathy adds up, in the long run, to cowardice.
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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.
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 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
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Reason works better when emotions are present the person sees sharper and more accurately when his emotions are engaged.
Rollo May
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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.
Rollo May
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The rebel is committed to giving a form and pattern to the world. It is a pattern born of the indomitable thrust of the human mind, the mind which makes out of the mass of meaningless data in the world an order and a form.
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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Ecstasy is the accurate term for the intensity of consciousness that occurs in the creative act.
Rollo May
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Humans have a habit of running faster when they have lost their way.
Rollo May
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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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Love is generally confused with dependence but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence.
Rollo May
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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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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.
Rollo May
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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.
Rollo May
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Now, I believe in life, and I believe in the joy of human existence, but these things cannot be experienced except as we also face the despair, also face the anxiety that every human being has to face if he lives with any creativity at all.
Rollo May