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

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

More quotes by Rollo May

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It is dangerous to know, but it is more dangerous not to know.
Rollo May
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Creativity is a yearning for immortality
Rollo May
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Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable.
Rollo May
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It is infinitely safer to know that the man at the top has his doubts, as you and I have ours, yet has the courage to move ahead in spite of these doubts.
Rollo May
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Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant.
Rollo May
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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.
Rollo May
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When we are dealing with human beings, no truth has reality by itself it is always dependent upon the reality of the immediate relationship.
Rollo May
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We must be fully committed, but we must also be aware at the same time that we might possibly be wrong. People who claim to be absolutely convinced that their stand is the only right one...is a dead giveaway of unconscious doubt. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt.
Rollo May
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There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular - though profoundly mistaken - definition of myth as falsehood.
Rollo May
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The ultimate error is the refusal to look evil in the face.
Rollo May
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By whatever name one calls it, genuine creativity is characterized by an intensity of awareness, a heightened consciousness.
Rollo May
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Ecstasy is the accurate term for the intensity of consciousness that occurs in the creative act.
Rollo May
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The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.
Rollo May
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Whatever sphere we may be in, there is a profound joy in the realization that we are helping to form the structure of the new world. This is creative courage, however minor or fortuitous our creations may be.
Rollo May
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A historical perspective can also help free us from the ever-present danger -- especially at danger in the social sciences -- of absolutizing a theory or method which is actually relative to the fact that we live at a given moment in time in the development of our particular culture.
Rollo May
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Freedom does not come automatically it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound it must be achieved each day.
Rollo May
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However it may be confounded or covered up or counterfeited, this elemental capacity to fight against injustice remains the distinguishing characteristic of human beings.
Rollo May
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When you are completely absorbed or caught up in something, you become oblivious to things around you, or to the passage of time. It is this absorption in what you are doing that frees your unconscious and releases your creative imagination.
Rollo May
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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.
Rollo May
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Purpose in the human being is a much more complex phenomenon than what used to be called will power.
Rollo May