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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
Necessary
Preserves
Conditions
Boredom
Worry
Tension
Sharpen
Existence
Condition
Relieve
Human
Presence
Assure
Humans
Essential
Confrontation
Anxiety
Sensitivity
Essentials
Preserve

More quotes by Rollo May

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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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Creativity is a yearning for immortality
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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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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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It may sound surprising when I say, on the basis of my own clinical practice as well as that of my psychological and psychiatric colleagues, that the chief problem of people in the middle decade of the twentieth century is emptiness.
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The creative act arises out of the struggle of human beings with and against that which limits them.
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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.
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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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It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.
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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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Creativity is neither the product of neurosis nor simple talent, but an intense courageous encounter with the Gods.
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By whatever name one calls it, genuine creativity is characterized by an intensity of awareness, a heightened consciousness.
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It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths.
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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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The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
Rollo May
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Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem.
Rollo May