Rollo May Quotes

For anyone with half a brain they can see that this play is about the human condition.

One doesn't do existential therapy as a freestanding separate theory; rather it informs your approach to such issues as death, which many therapists tend to shy away from.

I feel compassion is so important to develop in ourselves. It's one of the most important elements of being a human being.

Everything I do is somehow rooted in humanity. It's always about people; it's always about ego. It's always about desperation. It's quite existential. You know, 'Am I leading a good life?' That might be because I'm an atheist, and I think this is all we've got, so you better be nice. And have fun.

Being is the great explainer.

We need to learn to accept and certainly mourn any harm that comes to any human being on this earth. But we also need to not be vengeful.

As failures go, attempting to recall the past is like claiming to grasp the meaning of existence. Both make one feel like a baby clutching at a basketball: one's palms keep sliding off.

I'm not a religious person. Chances are that the universe neither treasures nor regrets us.

People have been unkind to me, but I do not want to swear vengeance. I am a simple human being.

Everybody is a human being. We should be able to coexist with one another.

Human beings are not capable of creating a thought that truly conceives of this existence. Nobody knows if we are really here, alive, or anything. It's a mystery.

I didn't study English literature - I studied philosophy at university - so Kierkegaard, Nietzsche - these people are among the most important writers to me. So my interest is in the big questions more than it is in storytelling.

I always aim to understand how much humanity is contained in each human being and how I can protect this humanity in a person.

I would like, in my arbitrary way, to bring one nearer to the actual human being.

If you want to prove that God is not dead, first prove that man is alive.

She is Living and I'm Dead, but I'd like to believe we're both human. Call me an idealist.

What he's really saying is: Please be a human being. With a life so full of rules and regiments, it's so easy to forget that's what they are. She knows—she sees—how often compassion takes a back seat to expediency.

My understanding of life is very existential. I think that we are our bodies. There's nothing else, and when we die, that's it. No afterlife.

What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.

Existence is not a mystery unless you think it has a meaning.

Understanding of being is itself a determination of being of Da-sein.

My God was never happiness, but to understand and be understood.

Dasein is a being that does not simply occur among other beings. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that in its being this being is concerned about its very being. Thus it is constitutive of the being of Dasein to have, in its very being, a relation of being to this being.

"What is the meaning of life?" This question has no answer except in the history of how it came to be asked. There is no answer because words have meaning, not life or persons or the universe itself. Our search for certainty rests in our attempts at understanding the history of all individual selves and all civilizations. Beyond that, there is only awe.

Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and historical tasks is an actual or potential assassin.