Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.
Depression is the inability to construct a future.
Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one's identity as a being of worth and dignity.
The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.
Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.
Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.
Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human tenderness.
It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.
Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one's death.
Loneliness is such an omnipotent and painful threat to many persons that they have little conception of the positive values of solitude and even, at times, are frightened at the prospect of being alone.
Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is.
Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.
A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.
Social acceptance, 'being liked,' has so much power because it holds the feelings of loneliness at bay.
If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.
It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle.
The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it's not without doubt but in spite of doubt.
I believe that the therapist's function should be to help people become free to be aware of and to experience their possibilities.
The human dilemma is that which arises out of a man's capacity to experience himself as both subject and object at the same time.
It may sound surprising when I say, on the basis of my own clinical practice as well as that of my psychological and psychiatric colleagues, that the chief problem of people in the middle decade of the twentieth century is emptiness.
