Rollo May Quotes

There's something in human nature that says we need to have at least one symbolic place where chaos and dark desires can live.

Every human being has a bit of gangster in him.

'Stimela' is the very first video I directed. I wanted it to be an emotional visual art piece, displaying humans as free, powerful animals. We are all running from something or searching for something; our instincts have been ignored.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

We've all got darkness inside us. And I've got quite a lot of darkness.

I think that there's a hidden darkness in all of us!

Who can map out the various forces at play in one soul? Man is a great depth, O Lord. The hairs of his head are easier by far to count than his feeling, the movements of his heart.

I'll play a happy character, but most characters are driven by a pain or a fear. They are driven by something deep down, and most people are like that in the sense. And so, that's what interests me.

I have never met anyone who wasn't confused inside.

There is within every human being a deep well of thinking over which a heavy iron lid is kept clamped.

We have long struggles with ourself, of which the outcome is one of our actions; they are, as it were, the inner side of human nature. This inner side is God's; the outer side belongs to men.

Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and all the agonies of the soul, but for all time his tormenting tragedy is, and will be, the tragedy of the bedroom.

I sometimes feel that I'm impersonating the dark unconscious of the whole human race. I know this sounds sick, but I love it.

Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots.

If you're really going to uncover something as an artist, you're going to come into access with parts of your personality and your psyche that are really uncomfortable to face: your own ambition, your own greed, your own avarice, your own jealousies, and anything that would get in the way of the purity of your own artistic voice.

The passion of vanity has its own depths in the spirit, and is powerfully militant.

We as beings are very contradictory, complicated creatures that work in our best interest and against our best interest. In a certain way, I want my work to have all that messiness.

A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour.

I'm more interested in the psychic intricacies that they build up and try to run away from, and how they self-construct. A lot of my work is about self-construction. Here, it's those folks who are deeply wounded and bewildered. They're not just victims of trauma; they've been shaken so forcefully that they don't quite know how or where to stand.

Many a one commits a reprehensible action, who is at bottom an honourable man, because man seldom acts upon natural impulse, but from some secret passion of the moment which lies hidden and concealed within the narrowest folds of his heart.

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. They then dwell in the house next door, and at any moment a flame may dart out and set fire to his own house. Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force.

The finest people, as people go, cannot help but betray a fair portion of fear and insecurity, even full-blown panic.

Man is a mixture of desires that extend beyond his knowledge and often result in action conflicting with rationality.

I really believe that all of us have a lot of darkness in our souls. Anger, rage, fear, sadness. I don't think that's only reserved for people who have horrible upbringings.