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Existential Quotes by Rollo May
- The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free.
- That because of this interplay of conscious and unconscious factors in guilt and the impossibility of legalistic blame, we are forced into an attitude of…
- Our thesis is that symbols and myths are an expression of man's unique self-consciousness, his capacity to transcend the immediate concrete situation and see his…
- Evil, in this system of ethics, is that which tears apart, shuts out the other person, raises barriers, sets people against each other.
- Symbols are specific acts or figures, while myths develop and elaborate these symbols into a story which contains characters and several episodes. The myth is…
- 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…
- There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular - though profoundly mistaken - definition of myth as…
- Indeed, compulsive and rigid moralism arises in given persons precisely as the result of a lack of sense of being. Rigid moralism is a compensatory…
- One must have at least a readiness to love the other person, broadly speaking, if one is to be able to understand him.
- When we are dealing with human beings, no truth has reality by itself; it is always dependent upon the reality of the immediate relationship.
- Artistic symbols and myths speak out of the primordial, preconscious realm of the mind which is powerful and chaotic. Both symbol and myth are ways…
- Good art wounds as well as delights. It must, because our defenses against the truth are wound so tightly around us. But as art chips…
- It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths.
More Existential Quotes
- One's condition on marijuana is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and how it is changing one. One… — Norman Mailer
- Optimism....is neither weak nor naive. It can be tough and pure and earned just as clearly as any brooding existential despair. — Charlie Pierce
- When in the evening we are alone with our most existential thoughts, it is then that we come face to face with… — Michael Kirby
- For my generation, coming of age at the height of the Cold War, fear of nuclear winter seemed the leading existential threat… — Ban Ki-moon
- Sometimes it has to do with other longings that are much more existential. Sometimes you go elsewhere not because you are not… — Esther Perel
- The individual is defined only by his relationship to the world and to other individuals; he exists only by transcending himself, and… — Simone de Beauvoir
- It is absolutely impossible for a subject to see or have insight into something while leaving itself out of the picture, so… — Friedrich Nietzsche
- Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consolation for death. — Simone de Beauvoir