Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, this is me and the damned world can go to hell.
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 away at our defenses, it also opens us to healing potentialities that transcend intellectual games and ego-preserving strategies.
Tenderness emerges from the fact that the two persons, longing, as all individuals do, to overcome the separateness and isolation to which we are all heir because we are individuals, can participate in a relationship that, for the moment, is not of two isolated selves but a union.
The human being cannot live in a condition of emptiness for very long: if he is not growing toward something, he does not merely stagnate; the pent-up potentialities turn into morbidity and despair, and eventually into destructive activities.
Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.
Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.
Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.
If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.
The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.
To 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.
It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way; and we grasp more fiercely at research, statistics, and technical aids in sex when we have lost the values and meaning of love.
Self-love is not only necessary and good, it is a prerequisite for loving others.
Depression is the inability to construct a future.
The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free.
One longs for the presence of a leader like Lincoln, who openly admitted his doubts and as openly preserved his commitment.
Beauty is the experience that gives us a sense of joy and a sense of peace simultaneously.
Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.
In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.
The amazing thing about love is that it is the best way to get to know ourselves.
Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable.