Rollo May Quotes

I think Dostoevsky was right that every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture where he says this is me and the damned world can go to hell.

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 problems with perspective.

Tenderness emerges from the fact that the two persons longing as all individuals do to overcome the separateness and isolation to which we are all heir because we are individuals can participate in a relationship that for the moment is not of two isolated selves but a union.

The threat, thus, in anxiety is not necessarily more intense than fear. Rather, it attacks us on a deeper level. The threat must be to something in the 'core' or 'essence' of the personality. My self-esteem, my experience of myself as a person, my feeling of being of worth - all of these are imperfect descriptions of what is threatened.

One means of allaying anxiety is frantic activity. The anxiety arising out of the dilemma of powerlessness in the face of suprapersonal economic forces on one hand, but theoretical belief in the efficacy of individual effort on the other, was symptomized partly by excessive activism.

Opposites though they are, both solitude and solidarity are essential if the artist is to produce works that are not only significant to his or her age, but that will also speak to future generations.

Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.

But attempts to evade anxiety are not only doomed to failure. In running from anxiety you lose your most precious opportunities for the emergence of yourself, and for your education as s human being.