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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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Erich Fromm
Age: 79 †
Born: 1900
Born: March 23
Died: 1980
Died: March 18
Philosopher
Psychoanalyst
Psychologist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Frankfurt/Main
Live
Materialism
Things
Manipulate
World
Consumption
Sane
Connection
Connections
Consumerism
Growth
Consume
History
Manipulation

More quotes by Erich Fromm

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If the Russians claim they are Socialist, this is just, I would say, a lie. They have no socialism at all. They have what I would call a state capitalism.
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Hate is a product of the unfulfilled life.
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Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions.
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That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.
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You have to stop to change direction.
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The paradoxical and tragic situation of man is that his conscience is weakest when he needs it most.
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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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According to me [Sigmund ] Freud did not notice that the dream expresses the inner experiences in a symbolic form,resembling in that, poetry or other art forms.
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The most important influence on a child is the character of its parents, rather than this or that single event.
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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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We are not only less reasonable and less decent in our dreams... we are also more inteligent, wiser and capable of better judgment when we are asleep than when we are awake.
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A vast sector of modern advertising... does not appeal to reason but to emotion like any other kind of hypnoid suggestion, it tries to impress its objects emotionally and then make them submit intellectually.
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[Sigmund ] Freud did not under-stand that the dream is a highly creative act, written in the universal language of symbolism, and only secondarily does censorship distort those parts that the subject refuses to accept even in sleep.
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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.
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If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature.
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In times of change, learners inherit the earth
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The most important factor for the development of the individual is the structure and the values of the society into which he was born.
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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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To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness
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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
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