Poets may be delightful creatures in the meadow or the garret, but they are menaces on the assembly line.

Rollo May

Categorized in : May Poet Lines

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.

perspective historical facts

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.

distance perspective self

The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one's own convictions - not obstinately or defiantly

hallmark conformity courage

The danger always exists that our technology will serve as a buffer between us and nature, a block between us and the deeper dimensions of our own experience.

dimensions block technology

This is hard for parents to say genuinely. by Rollo May

This is hard for parents to say genuinely.

In any age courage is the simple virtue needed for a human being to traverse the rocky road from infancy to maturity of personality. But in an age of anxiety, an age of herd morality and personal isolation, courage is a sine qua non. In periods when the mores of the society were more consistent guides, the individual was more firmly cushioned in his crises of development; but in times of transition like ours, the individual is thrown on his own at an earlier age and for a longer period.

maturity simple courage

Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations.

possibility consciousness awareness

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.

doubt men moving

Those we call saints rebelled against an outmoded and inadequate form of God on the basis of their new insights into divinity.

divinity saint form

Receptivity requires a nimbleness, a fine-honed sensitivity in order to let one's self be the vehicle of whatever vision may emerge.

vision self order

The insight is born with anxiety, guilt and the joy and gratification that is inseparable from the actualizing of a new idea or vision.

anxiety joy ideas

Finding the center of strenghth within ourselves is in the long run best contribution we can do to our fellow man

running men long

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.

neurosis errors personality

Lacking positive myths to guide him, many a sensitive contemporary man finds only the model of the machine beckoning him from every side to make himself over into its image.

machines sides men

When people feel their insignificance as individual persons, they also suffer an undermining of their sense of human responsibility.

responsibility suffering people

The authentic rebel knows that the silencing of all his adversaries is the last thing on earth he wishes: their extermination would deprive him and whoever else remains alive from the uniqueness, the originality, and the capacity for insight that these enemies being human also have and could share with him. If we wish the death of our enemies, we cannot talk about the community of man. In the losing of the chance for dialogue with our enemies, we are the poorer.

community men enemy

It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle. Strange as it sounds, steady, patient growth in freedom is probably the most difficult task of all, requiring the greatest courage. Thus if the term "hero" is used in this discussion at all, it must refer not to the special acts of outstanding persons, but to the heroic element potentially in every man.

hero courage moving

Power is required for communication. To stand before an indifferent or hostile group and have one's say, or to speak honestly to a friend truths that go deep and hurt these require self-affirmation, self-assertion, and even at times aggression. ... My experience in psychotherapy convinces me that the act which requires the most courage is the simple communication, unpropelled by rage or anger, of one's deepest thoughts to another.

communication simple hurt

The rebel is committed to giving a form and pattern to the world. It is a pattern born of the indomitable thrust of the human mind, the mind which makes out of the mass of meaningless data in the world an order and a form.

data giving order

There is a curiously sharp sense of joy - or perhaps better expressed, a sense of mild ecstasy - that comes when you find the particular form required by your creation.

creation form joy