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The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind - not the fiend or the sadist.

Erich Fromm

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Erich Fromm
Age: 79 †
Born: 1900
Born: March 23
Died: 1980
Died: March 18
Philosopher
Psychoanalyst
Psychologist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Frankfurt/Main
Fear
Sadist
Power
Fiend
Men
Chief
Chiefs
Extraordinary
Ordinary
Danger
Mankind

More quotes by Erich Fromm

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The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent.
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There is nothing inhuman, evil, or irrational which does not give some comfort, provided it is shared by a group.
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The most important misunderstanding seems to me to lie in a confusion between the human necessities which I consider part of human nature, and the human necessities as they appear as drives, needs, passions, etc., in any given historical period.
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The experience of separateness arouses anxiety it is, indeed, the source of all anxiety.
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Our vitality, and the vitality of each nation, rests on the sincerity and depth of the faith in the ideas which it announces, or pronounces.
Erich Fromm
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In the development of both capitalism and communism, as we visualize them in the next fifty or a hundred years, the processes that encourage human alienation will continue.
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For [Sigmund ] Freud, the manifest dream, that is that which we remember after waking,is like a code message, that can be interpreted, provided the right key is avail-able, for example the method of free association.
Erich Fromm
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When blended with sexuality, the death instinct is transformed into more harmless impulses expressed in sadism or masochism.
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A new question has arisen in modern man's mind, the question, namely, whether life is worth living...No sensible answer can be given to the question...because the question does not make any sense.
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The mother's and father's attitudes toward the child correspond to the child's own needs.... Mother has the function of making himsecure in life, father has the function of teaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems with which the particular society the child has been born into confronts him.
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Respect is not fear and awe it...[is]the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.
Erich Fromm
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We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.
Erich Fromm
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Love is hot a higher power which descends upon mn nor a duty which is imposed upon him it is his own power by which he relates himself to the world and makes it truly his.
Erich Fromm
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Modern man is assailed on every side and almost without interruption by noise - of the radio, of television, of headlines, of advertising and of the cinema - of which the greatest part, far from enlightening the mind, blunts and stultifies it.
Erich Fromm
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Man may be defined as the animal that can say ''I,'' that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.
Erich Fromm
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Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending it. He has to find principles of action and decision-making which replace the principles of instincts.
Erich Fromm
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Having lost religious faith and the humanistic values bound up with it, he [man] concentrated on technical and material values and lost the capacity for deep emotional experiences, for the joy and sadness that accompany them.
Erich Fromm
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Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.
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That is not quite enough to make one happy, if one spends eight hours a day in something which in itself has no meaning and interest, except that one gains money from it.
Erich Fromm
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The average American has separated his private life from his existence as a member of his society, and leaves that to the specialists in the government to take care of.
Erich Fromm