Quote

Violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness.

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
Superfluity
Powerlessness
Arises
Arise
Violence
Power

More quotes by Rollo May

Image
Professors will lecture with more inspiration if they occasionally alternate the classroom with the beach: authors will write better when, as Macaulay used to do, they write for two hours, then pitch quoits, and then go back to their writing. But certainly more than the mere mechanical alternation is involved.
Rollo May
Image
Inner sense of worth that comes with being in love does not seem to depend essentially on whether the love is returned or not.
Rollo May
Image
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 has to face if he lives with any creativity at all.
Rollo May
Image
It is dangerous to know, but it is more dangerous not to know.
Rollo May
Image
Beauty is the experience that gives us a sense of joy and a sense of peace simultaneously.
Rollo May
Image
That because of this interplay of conscious and unconscious factors in guilt and the impossibility of legalistic blame, we are forced into an attitude of acceptance of the universal human situation and a recognition of the participation of every one of us in man's inhumanity to man.
Rollo May
Image
Unconscious insights or answers to problems that come in reverie do not come hit or miss... they pertain to those areas in which the person consciously has worked laboriously and with dedication.
Rollo May
Image
It is amazing how many hints and guides and intuitions for living come to the sensitive person who has ears to hear what his body is saying.
Rollo May
Image
Anxiety is an even better teacher than reality, for one can temporarily evade reality by avoiding the distasteful situation but anxiety is a source of education always present because one carries it within.
Rollo May
Image
It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.
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
If we admit our depression openly and freely, those around us get from it an experience of freedom rather than the depression itself.
Rollo May
Image
We cannot will to have insights. We cannot will to have creativity, but we can will to give ourselves to the creative experience with intensity of dedication and commitment.
Rollo May
Image
They pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean.
Rollo May
Image
A dynamic struggle goes on within a person between what he or she consciously thinks on the one hand and, on the other, some insight, some perspective that is struggling to be born.
Rollo May
Image
One must have at least a readiness to love the other person, broadly speaking, if one is to be able to understand him.
Rollo May
Image
There is an energy field between humans. And, when we reach out in passion, it is met with an answering passion and changes the relationship forever.
Rollo May
Image
Care is a state in which something does matter care is the opposite of apathy. Care is the necessary source of eros, the source of human tenderness.
Rollo May
Image
Tools and techniques ought to be an extension of consciousness, but they can just as easily be a protection from consciousness. Then the tools become defence mechanisms... against the unconscious.
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