It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when they have lost their way.

Because it is possible to create — creating one’s self, willing to be one’s self, as well as creating in all the innumerable daily activities (and these are two phases of the same process) —...

It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths.

We live in a period of atomic chaos…the terrible apparition…the Nation State…and the hunt for happiness will never be greater than when it must be caught between today and tomorrow; because the day after tomorrow...

Finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow men. … One person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on...

There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular – though profoundly mistaken – definition of myth as falsehood.

Good art wounds as well as delights. It must, because our defenses against the truth are wound so tightly around us. But as art chips away at our defenses, it also opens us to healing...

When we are dealing with human beings, no truth has reality by itself; it is always dependent upon the reality of the immediate relationship.

Dogmatism of all kinds–scientific, economic, moral, as well as political–are threatened by the creative freedom of the artist. This is necessarily and inevitably so. We cannot escape our anxiety over the fact that the artists...

Artistic symbols and myths speak out of the primordial, preconscious realm of the mind which is powerful and chaotic. Both symbol and myth are ways of bringing order and form into this chaos.

Life is not a matter for simple optimism–for there is evil; nor for mere pessimism–for there is good. The possibility for good in the face of evil is what gives life tragic meaning.

A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.

Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based...

Indeed, compulsive and rigid moralism arises in given persons precisely as the result of a lack of sense of being. Rigid moralism is a compensatory mechanism by which the individual persuades himself to take over...

One must have at least a readiness to love the other person, broadly speaking, if one is to be able to understand him.

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

One of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety is that we are forced to become aware of ourselves.

It is highly significant and indeed almost a rule, that moral courage has its source in such identification through one’s own sensitivity with suffering of one’s fellow human beings.” (p. 16-17)

Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations.

Courage is not a virtue or value among other personal values like love o fidelity. It is the foundations that underlies and gives reality to all other virtue and personal values. (p. 13)

Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don’t find themselves at all.

Now, I believe in life, and I believe in the joy of human existence, but these things cannot be experienced except as we also face the despair, also face the anxiety that every human being...

Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it.

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.

Our powerful hunger for myth is a hunger for community. The person without a myth is a person without a home…To be a member of one’s community is to share in its myths…

Poets may be delightful creatures in the meadow or the garret, but they are menaces on the assembly line.

The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt. (p. 21)