Quotes from Rollo May

I make no apologies in admitting that I take very seriously the dehumanizing dangers in our tendency in modern science to make man over into the image of the machine, into the image of the techniques by which we study him.

Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human tenderness.

One central need in life is to fulfill its own potential.

It is amazing how many hints and guides and intuitions for living come to the sensitive person who has ears to hear what his body is saying.

All people are struggling to be creative in some way, and the artist is the one who has succeeded in this task of life.

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.

One does not become fully human painlessly.

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.

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.

Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human tenderness.

Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.

Human freedom involves our capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.

Courage is not the absence of despair it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one's identity as a being of worth and dignity.

It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle.

Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one's death.

The neurotic and the artist - since both live out the unconscious of the race - reveal to us what is going to emerge endemically in the society later on.

The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it's not without doubt but in spite of doubt.

It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when they have lost their way.

Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all.

In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.

The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it's conformity.

Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us. Like a chemical mixture, if one of us is changed, both of us will be. Will we grow in self-actualization, or will it destroy us? The one thing we can be certain of is that if we let ourselves fully into the relationship for good or evil, we will not come out unaffected.

Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, this is me and the damned world can go to hell.