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 MAYThe word courage comes from the same stem as the French word Coeur, meaning “heart.” Thus just as one’s heart, by pumping blood to one’s arms, legs, and brain enables all the other physical organs to function.
More Rollo May Quotes
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Suffering is nature’s way of indicating a mistaken attitude or way of behavior, and to the nonegocentric person every moment of suffering is the opportunity for growth. People should rejoice in suffering, strange as it sounds, for this is a sign of the availability of energy to transform their characters.
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Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one’s death.
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We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one’s total orientation to life.
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It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.
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This is what our society needs – not new ideas and inventions; important as these are, and not geniuses and supermen, but persons who can be, that is, persons who have a center of strength within themselves.
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All our feelings, like the artist’s paints and brush, are ways of communicating and sharing something meaningful from us to the world.
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Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one’s identity as a being of worth and dignity.
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I learned that healing and cure are active processes in which I myself needed to participate.
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This personal freedom to think and feel and speak authentically and to be conscious of so doing is the quality that distinguishes us as human.
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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.
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Courage is not a virtue of value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage our love pales into mere dependency. Without courage our fidelity becomes conformism.
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Does not the possibility or the power to do something about the situation at hand confer on one the responsibility to do it?
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The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one’s own convictions – not obstinately or defiantly
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The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.
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In my clinical experience, the greatest block to a person’s development is his having to take on a way of life which is not rooted in his own powers.
ROLLO MAY