Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence.
Rollo MayRead
Human freedom involves our capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Human freedom allows us to make conscious choices rather than reacting automatically.
This quote emphasizes that true freedom comes not just from the absence of constraints, but from the ability to reflect and choose our responses. Rollo May suggests that by pausing and considering our actions, we actively direct our lives rather than being at the mercy of external circumstances or impulses.
Themes
FreedomChoiceResponseControlReflection
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a motivational seminar to inspire individuals to take control of their lives.
More from Rollo May
All quotes βTo love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive - to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and an intensity of consciousness we did not know was possible before
Rollo MayRead
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 MayRead
Humor is the healthy way of feeling "distance" between one's self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one's problem with perspective.
Rollo MayRead
Beauty is the experience that gives us a sense of joy and a sense of peace simultaneously.
Rollo MayRead
The poet, like the lover, is a menace on the assembly line.
Rollo MayRead
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Total oblivion is the fate of almost everything in this world. I'm very likely to suffer that same fate; my work will probably not be remembered, and if any of it is, if any of those novels is fated to be one of those novels that is still being read 50 or 100 years after it was written, I've probably already written it.
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Of many, imagined blessings it may be doubted whether he that wants or possesses them had more reason to be satisfied with his lot.
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Nothing in the nature around us is evil. This needs to be repeated since one of the human ways of talking oneself into inhuman acts is to cite the supposed cruelty of nature.
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