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Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations.
Rollo May
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Rollo May
Age: 85 †
Born: 1909
Born: April 21
Died: 1994
Died: October 22
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Writer
Limitations
Limitation
Possibilities
Tension
Awareness
Possibility
Consciousness
Dialectical
Emerges
More quotes by Rollo May
Science, Nietzsche had warned, is becoming a factory, and the result will be ethical nihilism.
Rollo May
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.
Rollo May
Anxiety is an even better teacher than reality, for one can temporarily evade reality by avoiding the distasteful situation but anxiety is a source of education always present because one carries it within.
Rollo May
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
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.
Rollo May
Creativity occurs in an act of encounter and is to be understood with this encounter as its center.
Rollo May
Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.
Rollo May
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.
Rollo May
There is no meaningful yes unless the individual could also have said no.
Rollo May
It is dangerous to know, but it is more dangerous not to know.
Rollo May
The creative act arises out of the struggle of human beings with and against that which limits them.
Rollo May
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
Rollo May
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
Anxiety is essential to the human condition. The confrontation with anxiety can relieve us from boredom, sharpen the sensitivity and assure the presence of tension that is necessary to preserve human existence.
Rollo May
Creativity is a yearning for immortality
Rollo May
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.
Rollo May
Hate is not the opposite of love apathy is.
Rollo May
Purpose in the human being is a much more complex phenomenon than what used to be called will power.
Rollo May
Creativity is the result of a struggle between vitality and form. As anyone who has tried to write a sonnet or scan poetry, is aware, the form ideally do not take away from the creativity but may add to it.
Rollo May
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)
Rollo May
