Quote

Humor is the healthy way of feeling distance between one's self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one's problem with perspective.

Rollo May

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Rollo May
Age: 85 †
Born: 1909
Born: April 21
Died: 1994
Died: October 22
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Writer
Humor
Feeling
Looking
Feelings
Problem
Distance
Self
Perspective
Way
Standing
Healthy

More quotes by Rollo May

Image
By whatever name one calls it, genuine creativity is characterized by an intensity of awareness, a heightened consciousness.
Rollo May
Image
In any discussion of religion and personality integration the question is not whether religion itself makes for health or neurosis, but what kind of religion and how is it used? Freud was in error when he held that religion is per se a compulsion neurosis. Some religion is and some is not.
Rollo May
Image
Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all.
Rollo May
Image
One does not become fully human painlessly.
Rollo May
Image
Creativity occurs in an act of encounter and is to be understood with this encounter as its center.
Rollo May
Image
We must always base our commitment in the center of our own being, or else no commitment will be ultimately authentic.
Rollo May
Image
It is dangerous to know, but it is more dangerous not to know.
Rollo May
Image
Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.
Rollo May
Image
Anxiety is essential to the human condition. The confrontation with anxiety can relieve us from boredom, sharpen the sensitivity and assure the presence of tension that is necessary to preserve human existence.
Rollo May
Image
The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free.
Rollo May
Image
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)
Rollo May
Image
I learned that healing and cure are active processes in which I myself needed to participate.
Rollo May
Image
Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations.
Rollo May
Image
Real freedom is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose.
Rollo May
Image
Poets may be delightful creatures in the meadow or the garret, but they are menaces on the assembly line.
Rollo May
Image
The receptivity of the artist must never be confused with passivity. Receptivity is the artist's holding him or herself alive and open to hear what being may speak.
Rollo May
Image
Creativity is a yearning for immortality
Rollo May
Image
Life comes from physical survival but the good life comes from what we care about.
Rollo May
Image
Beauty is the experience that gives us a sense of joy and a sense of peace simultaneously.
Rollo May
Image
Physical courage in whatever scene ... seems to hinge on whether the individual can feel he is fighting for others as well as himself.
Rollo May