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.
Vanity and narcissism – the compulsive need to be admired and praised – undermine one’s courage, for one then fights on someone else’s conviction rather than one’s own.
Neither Kierkegaard nor Nietzsche had the slightest interest in starting a movement – or a new system, a thought which would indeed have offended them. Both proclaimed, in Nietzsche’s phrase, Follow not me, but you!
Evil, in this system of ethics, is that which tears apart, shuts out the other person, raises barriers, sets people against each other.
I learned that healing and cure are active processes in which I myself needed to participate.
The first thing necessary for a constructive dealing with time is to learn to live in the reality of the present moment. For psychologically speaking, this present moment is all we have.
Humans have a habit of running faster when they have lost their way.
One of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety is that we are forced to become aware of ourselves.