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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
Mankind
Fear
Sadist
Power
Fiend
Men
Chief
Chiefs
Extraordinary
Ordinary
Danger

More quotes by Erich Fromm

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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.
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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.
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The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity.
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I believe that the experience of love is the most human and humanizing act that it is given to man to enjoy and that it, like reason, makes no sense if conceived in a partial way.
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Man absolutely cannot live by himself.
Erich Fromm
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Finally one arrives at this: the state of sleep has an ambiguous function in sleep, the lack of contact with the culture brings out the worst and also the best in us.
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Freedom does not mean license.
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Whether...a change from the supremacy of natural science to a new social science will take place...depends on one factor: how many brilliant, learned, disciplined, and caring men and women are attracted by the new challenge.
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Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.
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Man today being concerned with production and consumption as ends in themselves, has very little engergy time to devote himself to the true religious experience.
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Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.
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Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar, and you'll live as you've never lived before.
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. . . freedom to creat and construct, to wonder and to venture. Such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible, not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine . . . It is not enough that men are not slaves if social conditions further the existence of automatons, the result will not be love of life, but love of death.
Erich Fromm
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People have committed suicide because of their failure to realize the passions for love , power , fame , revenge . Cases of suicide because of a lack of sexual satisfaction are virtually nonexistent.
Erich Fromm
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[Sigmund ] Freud assumes that every dream represents the satisfaction of adesire and in the last analysis, of a sexual desire that has its roots in infancy.
Erich Fromm
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Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous.
Erich Fromm
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There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started out with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which fails so regularly, as love.
Erich Fromm
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Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.
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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
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The affirmation of one's own life, happiness, growth and freedom, is rooted in one's capacity to love.
Erich Fromm