Quote

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

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Rollo May
Age: 85 †
Born: 1909
Born: April 21
Died: 1994
Died: October 22
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Writer
Humans
Essential
Confrontation
Anxiety
Sensitivity
Essentials
Preserve
Necessary
Preserves
Conditions
Boredom
Worry
Tension
Sharpen
Existence
Condition
Relieve
Human
Presence
Assure

More quotes by Rollo May

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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.
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Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.
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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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Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations.
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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.
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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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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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There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular - though profoundly mistaken - definition of myth as falsehood.
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The ultimate error is the refusal to look evil in the face.
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Apathy adds up, in the long run, to cowardice.
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Science, Nietzsche had warned, is becoming a factory, and the result will be ethical nihilism.
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The daimonic is any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person. Sex and eros, anger and rage, and the craving for power are examples. The daimonic can be either creative or destructive and is normally both.
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Violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness.
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Our age is one of transition, in which the normal channels for utilizing the daimonic are denied and such ages tend to be times when the daimonic is expressed in its most destructive form.
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In religion, it is not the sycophants or those who cling most faithfully to the status quo who are ultimately praised. It is the insurgents.
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There is nobody who totally lacks the courage to change.
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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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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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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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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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