7 Rollo May Quotes on Values

Rollo May quotes on values

3. The upshot is that the values and goals which provided a unifying center for previous centuries in the modern period no longer are cogent. We have not yet found the new center which will enable us to choose our goals constructively, and thus to overcome the painful bewilderment and anxiety of not knowing which way to move. Another root of our malady is our loss of the sense of the worth and dignity of the human being. Nietzsche predicted this when he pointed out that the individual was being swallowed up in the herd, and that we were living by a 'slave-morality.' Marx also predicted it when he proclaimed that modern man was being 'de-humanized,' and Kafka showed in his amazing stories how people literally can lose their identify as persons.

8. We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One's religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for.

19. Anxiety occurs because of a threat to the values a person identifies with his existence as a self...most anxiety comes from a threat to social, emotional and moral values the person identifies with himself. And here we find that a main source of anxiety, particularly in the younger generation, is that they do not have viable values available in the culture on the basis of which they can relate to their world. The anxiety which is inescapable in an age in which values are so radically in transition is a central cause of apathy..., such prolonged anxiety tends to develop into lack of feeling and the experience of depersonalization.

21. a person can meet anxiety to the extent that his values are stronger than the threat.

70. Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.

73. I think Dostoevsky was right, that 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.

104. My Quest for Beauty (1985)