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Real freedom is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose.

Rollo May

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Rollo May
Age: 85 †
Born: 1909
Born: April 21
Died: 1994
Died: October 22
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Writer
Real
Pause
Stimulus
Pauses
Response
Choose
Ability
Freedom

More quotes by Rollo May

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Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable.
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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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It is well to remind ourselves that anxiety signifies a conflict, and so long as a conflict is going on, a constructive solution is possible.
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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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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.
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When we are dealing with human beings, no truth has reality by itself it is always dependent upon the reality of the immediate relationship.
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Life comes from physical survival but the good life comes from what we care about.
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Creativity is a yearning for immortality
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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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It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.
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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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Beauty is the experience that gives us a sense of joy and a sense of peace simultaneously.
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Evil, in this system of ethics, is that which tears apart, shuts out the other person, raises barriers, sets people against each other.
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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.
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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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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.
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Humor is the healthy way of feeling distance between one's self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one's problem with perspective.
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Apathy adds up, in the long run, to cowardice.
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The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.
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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.
Rollo May