Verified Quotes
Every quote on this page is verified against the named source work.
Rollo May, American existential psychologist who carried Kierkegaard and the existentialists into the consulting room, gets quoted everywhere and sourced almost nowhere. The 14 quotes below are different: each one is checked word for word against the cited work, starting with The Courage to Create, not copied from aggregator sites that pass misattributions along. The source is named under every line, so you can trace each quote back to the page it came from.
Read Rollo May's full profile and how they reason →6 verified quotes
On choosing to stand out instead of fitting in:
The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.Rollo May, The Courage to Create
On feeling stuck after a major setback:
Depression is the inability to construct a future.Rollo May, The Courage to Create
On starting a project with no guarantee it will work:
Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being. Creativity requires passion and commitment.Rollo May, The Courage to Create
On committing to someone even without full certainty:
Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt.Rollo May, The Courage to Create
Deciding whether fear should be allowed to veto a change you want to make:
In human beings courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible.Rollo May, The Courage to Create
Deciding whether to make space in your life for the work only you can make:
Creativity is a necessary sequel to being.Rollo May, The Courage to Create
4 verified quotes
On pausing before reacting to something that hurt you:
Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself
On working longer hours instead of asking if it's the right job:
It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself
On refusing to go along with what everyone expects of you:
Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, this is me and the culture be damned.Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself
Deciding whether to stay in a hard situation because it has meaning:
Human beings can bear a surprising amount of stress and pain if they feel that what they are doing is meaningful.Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself
2 verified quotes
Sorting out whether a relationship is built on need or genuine want:
Sex is a need, but love is a wish; and the crucial question is what to do about the discrepancy between needs and wishes.Rollo May, Love and Will
Deciding what real commitment to someone actually requires of you:
We express love and will together as care.Rollo May, Love and Will
1 verified quote
Naming what a frightening diagnosis or ending is actually threatening in you:
Anxiety is the experience of the threat of imminent nonbeing.Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety
1 verified quote
Weighing how much of your path is choice versus circumstance:
The relationship between freedom and destiny is one of the great paradoxes of human existence.Rollo May, Freedom and Destiny