351 Quotes by Rollo May

Man is the “ethical animal” ethical in potentiality even if, unfortunately, not in actuality. His capacity for ethical judgment like freedom, reason and the other unique characteristics of the human being is based upon his consciousness of himself.

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

Tenderness emerges from the fact that the two persons, longing, as all individuals do, to overcome the separateness and isolation to which we are all heir because we are individuals, can participate in a relationship that, for the moment, is not of two isolated selves but a union.

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.

I’m just a collection of mirrors, reflecting what everyone else expects of me.

Everyone belongs to a society, whether he wishes it or not, whether he chooses it or not, whether he contributes constructively to its development or does the reverse. Community, on the contrary, implies one’s relating one’s self to others affirmatively and responsibly. Community in the economic sense implies an emphasis on the social values and functions of work. Community in the psychological sense involves the individual’s relating himself to others in love as well as creativity.

The receptivity of the artist must never be confused with passivity.

Much self-condemnation is a cloak for arrogance. Those who think they overcome pride by condemning themselves could well ponder Spinoza’s remark “One who despises himself is the nearest to a proud man.

A young man came for psychotherapy because, though he was intellectually very competent and seemed superficially to be very successful, his spontaneity was almost completely blocked.