“Power is required for communication.”

—  Rollo May

Source: Power and Innocence (1972), Ch. 12 : Toward New Community
Context: Power is required for communication. To stand before an indifferent or hostile group and have one's say, or to speak honestly to a friend truths that go deep and hurt — these require self-affirmation, self-assertion, and even at times aggression. … My experience in psychotherapy convinces me that the act which requires the most courage is the simple communication, unpropelled by rage or anger, of one's deepest thoughts to another.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Power is required for communication." by Rollo May?
Rollo May photo
Rollo May 135
US psychiatrist 1909–1994

Related quotes

“Women from earliest times have been used as conveniences of communication with unseen, inaccessible powers, but always in the sense that such exposing of self to dangerous mysteries, such destruction of the understanding as was required to become the slave of unseen powers, did not matter because the communicant was only a woman, in herself an undetermined cipher – a nothing.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

"The Idea of God" from Essays from Epilogue (Manchester: Carcanet, 2001)

Buckminster Fuller photo

“The explicable requires the inexplicable. Experience requires the nonexperienceable. The obvious requires the mystical. This is a powerful group of paired concepts generated by the complementarity of conceptuality.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

501.13 http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s05/p0000.html#501.10
1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), "Synergy" onwards

Felix Frankfurter photo

“Time and experience have forcefully taught that the power to inspect dwelling places, either as a matter of systematic area-by-area search or, as here, to treat a specific problem, is of indispensable importance in the maintenance of community health; a power that would be greatly hobbled by the blanket requirement of the safeguards necessary for a search of evidence of criminal acts.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Frank v. Maryland, 359 U.S. 360, 372 (1959); majority opinion in 5-4 ruling that allowed health inspectors to enter a private home without a search warrant (May 4, 1959).
Judicial opinions

Ramana Maharshi photo

“Peace is for the purification of one's mind. Power is for the growth of the community. Having established the community with power, one should then establish supreme peace.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Sri Ramana Gita

Eric Hobsbawm photo

“The paradox of communism in power was that it was conservative.”

Eric Hobsbawm book The Age of Extremes

Source: The Age of Extremes (1992), p. 422.

Simon Sinek photo

“Leadership requires two things: a vision of the world that does not yet exist and the ability to communicate it.”

Simon Sinek (1973) British/American author and motivational speaker

Source: Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

“Richard Feynman presciently stated… that ‘There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom’. …within this vast room … there will be a requirement for communication.”

Stephen F Bush

Bush, S.F., Nanoscale Communication Networks, 2010, 308 pages, Artech House; 1 edition (February 28, 2010) ISBN-10: 1608070034, ISBN-13: 978-1608070039.

Woodrow Wilson photo

“There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Address to the Senate (22 January 1917)
1910s
Context: The question upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is this: Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace, or only for a new balance of power? If it be only a struggle for a new balance of power, who will guarantee, who can guarantee, the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

“Jesus' call to bear the cross places all who follow him in the community of the forgiveness of sins. Forgiving sins is the Christ-suffering required of his disciples. It is required of all Christians.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), Discipleship and the Cross, p. 88.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

“Jesus' call to bear the cross places all who follow him in the community of the forgiveness of sins. Forgiving sins is the Christ-suffering required of his disciples. It is required of all Christians.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), Discipleship and the Cross, p. 88

Related topics