Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence.
Rollo MayRead
This personal freedom to think and feel and speak authentically and to be conscious of so doing is the quality that distinguishes us as human.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Authentic self-expression is what makes us uniquely human.
Rollo May highlights the essential nature of personal freedom, emphasizing that the ability to think, feel, and express oneself genuinely is a defining characteristic of humanity. He suggests that consciousness in our actions and expression underpins our identity and individuality, making authenticity vital for living a fulfilling life.
Themes
AuthenticityFreedomSelf-ExpressionHumanityConsciousness
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech to inspire people to embrace their authenticity.
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
Similar quotes
I learned that realism can come in all shapes and sizes. The world is big enough for different values to coexist.
Haruki MurakamiRead
Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.
W. E. B. Du BoisRead
In Christ there is no East nor West.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Read
Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences progress in even greater extent and depth, and the human mind widen itself as much as it desires: beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it shines forth in the Gospels, it will not go.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
I get the feeling more and more that religion is being left behind.
Richard DawkinsRead