Erich Fromm Quotes - Page 9

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• Man is the only animal who does not feel at home in nature, who can feel evicted from paradise, the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem that he has to solve and from which he cannot escape. He cannot go back to the prehuman state of harmony with nature, and he does not know where he will arrive if he goes forward. Man's existential contradiction results in a state of constant disequilibrium. This disequilibrium distinguishes him from the animal, which lives, as it were, in harmony with nature.

  Erich Fromm

  Home, Animal, Men

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.373, Open Road Media

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• Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.

  Erich Fromm

  Love, Life, Two

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Sane Society”, p.166, Open Road Media

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• Only in being productively active can man make sense of his life.

  Erich Fromm

  Men, Make Sense, Active

  Erich Fromm, Karl Marx (2013). “Marx's Concept of Man: Including 'Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts'”, p.26, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the same time the beginning of his freedom and the development of his reason.

  Erich Fromm

  Freedom, Men, Liberty

  "Psychoanalysis and Religion".

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• The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation; in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society - and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic.

  Erich Fromm

  Home, Average, Sick

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• Loving becomes, and the ability to love, becomes one of the most important things in life.

  Erich Fromm

  Love Is, Things In Life, Important

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

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• If the meaning of life has become doubtful, if one's relations to others and to oneself do not offer security, then fame is one means to silence one's doubts. It has a function to be compared with that of the Egyptian pyramids or the Christian faith in immortality: it elevates one's individual life from its limitations and instability to the plane of indestructability; if one's name is known to one's contemporaries and if one can hope that it will last for centuries, then one's life has meaning and significance by this very reflection of it in the judgments of others.

  Erich Fromm

  Christian, Mean, Reflection

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.57, Open Road Media

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• Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men and from nature. His main aim is profitable exchange of his skills, knowledge, and of himself, his "personality package" with others who are equally intent on a fair and profitable exchange. Life has no goal except the one to move, no principle except the one of fair exchange, no satisfaction except the one to consume.p97.

  Erich Fromm

  Moving, Men, Skills

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.107, Open Road Media

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• Freedom is not a constant attribute which we either "have" or "have not." In fact, there is no such thing as "freedom" except as a word and an abstract concept. There is only one reality: the act of freeing ourselves in the process of making choices. In this process the degree of our capacity to make choices varies with each act, with our practice of life.

  Erich Fromm

  Reality, Practice, Choices

  Erich Fromm (2011). “The Heart of Man”, p.132, Lantern Books

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• Even if man's hunger and thirst and his sexual strivings are completely satisfied, 'he' is not satisfied. In contrast to the animal his most compelling problems are not solved then, they only begin. He strives for power or for love, or for destruction, he risks his life for religious, for political, for humanistic ideals, and these strivings are what constitutes and characterizes the peculiarity of human life.

  Erich Fromm

  Religious, Animal, Men

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics”, p.46, Routledge

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• Modern capitalism needs men who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority or principle or conscience-- yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected of them, to fit into the social machine without friction; who can be guided without force, led without leaders, prompted without aim-- except the one to make good, to be on the move, to function, to go ahead.

  Erich Fromm

  Moving, Independent, Men

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• Men are born equal but they are also born different.

  Erich Fromm

  Respect, Equality, Men

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.266, Open Road Media

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• I would say our social relationships are relatively shallow. We are actually afraid to be intimate, with people - many people even with their wives and husbands.

  Erich Fromm

  Husband, People, Wife

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

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• Also in contemporary Western society the union with the group is the prevalent way of overcoming separateness. It is a union which the individual self disappears to a large extent, and where the aim is to belong to the heard. If I am like everybody else, if I have no feeling or thoughts which make me different, if I conform in custom, dress, ideas, to the pattern of the group, I am saved: saved from the frightening experience of aloneness.

  Erich Fromm

  Self, Ideas, Feelings

  ERICH FROMM (1956). “THE ART OF LOVING”

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• To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.

  Erich Fromm

  Sympathy, Death, Wise

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics”, p.162, Routledge

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• The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. But given man's nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become ''Golems',' they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life.

  Erich Fromm

  Future, Past, Men

  "The Sane Society". Book by Erich Fromm, p. 102, 1955.

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• Critical and radical thought will only bear fruit when it is blended with the most precious quality man is endowed with - the love of life

  Erich Fromm

  Love Life, Men, Quality

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.728, Open Road Media

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• Human history began with an act of disobedience and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.

  Erich Fromm

  Obedience, Unlikely, Humans

  "Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem". "On Disobedience and Other Essays" by Erich Fromm, 1981.

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• People seek a new orientation, a new philosophy, one which is centered on the priorities of life-physically and spiritually-and not on the priorities of death.

  Erich Fromm

  Philosophy, People, Life And Death

  Erich Fromm (2011). “The Revolution of Hope”, p.16, Lantern Books

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• Reason flows from the blending of rational thought and feeling. If the two functions are torn apart, thinking deteriorates into schizoid intellectual activity and feeling deteriorates into neurotic life-damaging passions.

  Erich Fromm

  Passion, Thinking, Two

  Erich Fromm (2011). “The Revolution of Hope”, p.51, Lantern Books

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• We talk about equality, about happiness, about freedom - and about the spiritual values of religion, and about God - and in our daily life, we act on principles which are different, and partly contradictory.

  Erich Fromm

  Spiritual, Principles, Different

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

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• Psychoanalysis is essentially a theory of unconscious strivings, of resistance, of falsification of reality according to one's subjective needs and expectations.

  Erich Fromm

  Reality, Expectations, Needs

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.150, Open Road Media

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• Even the most sadistic and destructive man is human, as human as the saint.

  Erich Fromm

  Men, Saint, Human Nature

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.29, Open Road Media

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• Man can never stand still. He must find solutions to this contradiction, and ever better solutions to the extent to which reality enables him.

  Erich Fromm

  Reality, Men, Contradiction

  "Human Nature and Social Theory". Letter by Erich Fromm to Vladimir Dobrenkov, March 10, 1969.

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• The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.

  Erich Fromm

  Art, Creation, Capacity

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