Rollo May — Quote from The Courage to Create
“Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.”
The Courage to Create (1975)
Concepts: agency, mortality, meaning
Resonant Quotes
- “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling ...” — Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours Both quotes articulate the same fundamental insight about human resilience—that authentic living requires moving thro...
- “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certain...” — Václav Havel, Disturbing the Peace May's courage that persists through despair and Havel's hope grounded in meaning rather than outcomes both articulate...
- “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invinci...” — Albert Camus, Return to Tipasa Both quotes illuminate how genuine strength emerges not from the absence of darkness but from discovering what persis...
- “Arrange whatever pieces come your way.” — Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse Both articulate a philosophy of creative action despite imperfect conditions—Woolf's arrangement of fragments mirrors...
- “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” — Søren Kierkegaard, Journals May's courage that moves through despair offers a practical response to Kierkegaard's temporal paradox of living forw...
- “The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and ...” — Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition Both quotes understand human agency as miraculous precisely because it emerges against overwhelming odds—whether stat...
- “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certain...” — Václav Havel, Disturbing the Peace Both quotes redefine positive virtues not as absence of difficulty but as meaningful orientation within it—Havel's ho...
- “Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing th...” — Rabindranath Tagore, Fruit-Gathering Both define courage not as the absence of struggle but as the capacity to move forward through pain, with Tagore's pr...