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Quotes from Power and Innocence — Rollo May

d. 1994 United States

← All quotes by Rollo May

14 quotes

However it may be confounded or covered up or counterfeited, this elemental capacity to fight against injustice remains the distinguishing characteristic of human beings.

Power and Innocence (1972)

Community can be defined simply as a group in which free conversation can take place.

Power and Innocence (1972)

Civilization begins with a rebellion.

Power and Innocence (1972)

He is drawn to the unquiet minds and spirits, for he shares their everlasting inability to accept stultifying control.

Power and Innocence (1972)

If we wish the death of our enemies, we cannot talk about the community of man.

Power and Innocence (1972)

Civilization gets its first flower from the rebel.

Power and Innocence (1972)

There is no meaningful "yes" unless the individual could also have said "no."

Power and Innocence (1972)

This is a tale of the agony of the creative individual, whose nightly rest only resuscitates him so that he can endure his agonies the next day.

Power and Innocence (1972)

Physical courage in whatever scene … seems to hinge on whether the individual can feel he is fighting for others as well as himself.

Power and Innocence (1972)

Power is required for communication.

Power and Innocence (1972)

Art is a substitute for violence.

Power and Innocence (1972)

The rebel is committed to giving a form and pattern to the world. It is a pattern born of the indomitable thrust of the human mind, the mind which makes out of the mass of meaningless data in the world an order and a form.

Power and Innocence (1972)

Note the startling regularity through history with which society martyrs the rebel in one generation and worships him in the next. Socrates, Jesus, William Blake, Buddha, Krishna — the list is as endless as it is rich.

Power and Innocence (1972)

The function of the rebel is to shake the fixated mores of the rigid order of civilization; and this shaking, though painful, is necessary if the society is to be saved from boredom and apathy. Obviously I do not refer to everyone who calls himself a rebel, but only to the authentic rebel. Civilization gets its first flower from the rebel.

Power and Innocence (1972)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Rollo May (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.