Rollo May Quotes About Courage

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

  Rollo May

  Courage, Soulmate, Self Esteem

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

  Rollo May

  Courage, Moving, Despair

  Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.12, W. W. Norton & Company

• The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.

  Rollo May

  Courage, Mean, Cat

  Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.14, W. W. Norton & Company

• Courage is not a virtue of value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage our love pales into mere dependency. Without courage our fidelity becomes conformism.

  Rollo May

  Courage, Reality, Like Love

  Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.13, W. W. Norton & Company

• What anxiety means is it's as though the world is knocking at your door, and you need to create, you need to make something, you need to do something. I think anxiety, for people who have found their own heart and their own souls, for them it is a stimulus toward creativity, toward courage. It's what makes us human beings.

  Rollo May

  Courage, Heart, Creativity

• The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one's own convictions - not obstinately or defiantly

  Rollo May

  Courage, Conformity, Hallmark

• What is courage? This courage will not be the opposite of despair. We shall often be faced with despair, as indeed every sensitive person has been during the last several decades in this country. Hence Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Camus and Sartre have proclaimed that courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

  Rollo May

  Country, Courage, Moving

• Courage is the capacity to meet the anxiety which arises as one achieves freedom. It is the willingness to differentiate, to move from the protecting realms of parental dependence to new levels of freedom and integration.

  Rollo May

  Courage, Moving, Anxiety

  Rollo May (2009). “Man's Search for Himself”, p.169, W. W. Norton & Company

• Joy is the zest that you get out of using your talents, your understanding, the totality of your being, for great aims...That's the kind of feeling that goes with creativity. That's why I say the courage to create. Creation does not come out of simply what you're born with. That must be united with your courage, both of which cause anxiety, but also great joy.

  Rollo May

  Courage, Creativity, Using Your Talents

• 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. Strange as it sounds, steady, patient growth in freedom is probably the most difficult task of all, requiring the greatest courage. Thus if the term "hero" is used in this discussion at all, it must refer not to the special acts of outstanding persons, but to the heroic element potentially in every man.

  Rollo May

  Courage, Moving, Hero

  Rollo May (2009). “Man's Search for Himself”, p.174, W. W. Norton & Company

• Whatever sphere we may be in, there is a profound joy in the realization that we are helping to form the structure of the new world. This is creative courage, however minor or fortuitous our creations may be.

  Rollo May

  Courage, Creativity, Profound

  Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.35, W. W. Norton & Company

• In any age courage is the simple virtue needed for a human being to traverse the rocky road from infancy to maturity of personality. But in an age of anxiety, an age of herd morality and personal isolation, courage is a sine qua non. In periods when the mores of the society were more consistent guides, the individual was more firmly cushioned in his crises of development; but in times of transition like ours, the individual is thrown on his own at an earlier age and for a longer period.

  Rollo May

  Courage, Maturity, Simple

  "Man's Search for Himself" by Rollo May, (p.191), 1953.

• 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

  Courage, Creative, Patterns

  Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.21, W. W. Norton & Company

• Creativity is neither the product of neurosis nor simple talent, but an intense courageous encounter with the Gods.

  Rollo May

  Courage, Creativity, Simple

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

  Rollo May

  Courage, Moving, Long

  Rollo May Ph.D. (1953). “Man's Search for Himself”

• 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

  Courage, Responsibility, Decision

  Rollo May (2009). “Man's Search for Himself”, p.173, W. W. Norton & Company

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