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Violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness.

Rollo May

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Rollo May
Age: 85 †
Born: 1909
Born: April 21
Died: 1994
Died: October 22
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Writer
Arises
Arise
Violence
Power
Superfluity
Powerlessness

More quotes by Rollo May

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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
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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.
Rollo May
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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.
Rollo May
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Ecstasy is the accurate term for the intensity of consciousness that occurs in the creative act.
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.
Rollo May
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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.
Rollo May
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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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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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Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable.
Rollo May
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It is infinitely safer to know that the man at the top has his doubts, as you and I have ours, yet has the courage to move ahead in spite of these doubts.
Rollo May
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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.
Rollo May
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Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all.
Rollo May
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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.
Rollo May
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Creativity is a yearning for immortality
Rollo May
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Good art wounds as well as delights. It must, because our defenses against the truth are wound so tightly around us. But as art chips away at our defenses, it also opens us to healing potentialities that transcend intellectual games and ego-preserving strategies.
Rollo May
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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.
Rollo May
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Whereas moral courage is the righting of wrongs, creative courage, in contrast, is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built.
Rollo May
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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.
Rollo May
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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.
Rollo May
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Creativity is the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his world.
Rollo May