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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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Rollo May
Age: 85 †
Born: 1909
Born: April 21
Died: 1994
Died: October 22
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Writer
Requires
Courage
Relationship
Risk
Actualization
Cannot
Outset
Inescapable
Intimacy
Affect

More quotes by Rollo May

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Unconscious insights or answers to problems that come in reverie do not come hit or miss... they pertain to those areas in which the person consciously has worked laboriously and with dedication.
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It is highly significant and indeed almost a rule, that moral courage has its source in such identification through one's own sensitivity with suffering of one's fellow human beings. (p. 16-17)
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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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There is no authentic inner freedom that does not, sooner or later, also affect and change human history.
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The amazing thing about love is that it is the best way to get to know ourselves.
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Inner sense of worth that comes with being in love does not seem to depend essentially on whether the love is returned or not.
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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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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.
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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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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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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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We must be fully committed, but we must also be aware at the same time that we might possibly be wrong. People who claim to be absolutely convinced that their stand is the only right one...is a dead giveaway of unconscious doubt. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt.
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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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There is an energy field between humans. And, when we reach out in passion, it is met with an answering passion and changes the relationship forever.
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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.
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Creativity is neither the product of neurosis nor simple talent, but an intense courageous encounter with the Gods.
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Courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible.
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If we admit our depression openly and freely, those around us get from it an experience of freedom rather than the depression itself.
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We cannot will to have insights. We cannot will to have creativity, but we can will to give ourselves to the creative experience with intensity of dedication and commitment.
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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