Rollo May Quotes

136 Sourced Quotes

We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One's religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for.

Rollo May
To say a person is a coward has no more meaning than to say he is lazy: It simply tells us that some vital potentiality is unrealized or blocked.

Rollo May
By whatever name one calls it, genuine creativity is characterized by an intensity of awareness, a heightened consciousness.

Rollo May
Courage is required not only in a person's occasional crucial decision for his own freedom, but in the little hour-to-hour decisions which place the bricks in the structure of his building of himself into a person who acts with freedom and responsibility.

Rollo May
The mature person becomes able to differentiate feelings into as many nuances, strong and passionate experiences, or delicate and sensitive ones, as in the different passages of music in a symphony. Unfortunately, many of us have feelings limited like notes in a bugle call.

Rollo May
The first thing necessary for a constructive dealing with time is to learn to live in the reality of the present moment. For psychologically speaking, this present moment is all we have.

Rollo May
I learned that healing and cure are active processes in which I myself needed to participate.

Rollo May
The most effective way to ensure the value of the future is to confront the present courageously and constructively.

Rollo May
Freedom does not come automatically; it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound; it must be achieved each day.

Rollo May
Evil, in this system of ethics, is that which tears apart, shuts out the other person, raises barriers, sets people against each other.

Rollo May
Courage is the basic virtue for everyone so long as he continues to grow, to move ahead.

Rollo May
Insight comes at a moment of transition between work and relaxation.

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

Rollo May
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
Every act of genuine creativity means achieving a higher level of self-awareness and personal freedom.

Rollo May