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Man's biological weakness is the condition of human culture.

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
Conditions
Culture
Human
Humans
Men
Biological
Condition
Weakness

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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.
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The need for the creation of collective art and ritual on a nonclerical basis is at least as important as literacy and higher education.
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The experience of separateness arouses anxiety it is, indeed, the source of all anxiety.
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Love is not easy. All great religions postulate love as one of the greatest accomplishments. If it were that easy, or as easy as most people think, certainly, the great religious leaders would have been rather naive.
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Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one's identity, in the many ways in which such violation is possible.
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Once they are through the process of education, most people lose the capacity of wondering, of being surprised. They feel they ought to know everything, and hence that it is a sign of ignorance to be surprised or puzzled by anything.
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Sleep is often the only occasion in which man cannot silence his conscience we forget what we knew in our dream.
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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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Human history began as an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience. At this point in history the capacity to doubt, to criticize and to disobey may be all that stands between a future for mankind and the end of civilization.
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To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.
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To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.
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The root of the word education is e-ducere, literally, to lead forth, or to bring out something which is potentially present.
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Politics and religious leaders [are hindered] by their egotism.
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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.
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In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.
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You have to stop in order to change direction.
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Man absolutely cannot live by himself.
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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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