Quote

. . . 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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Erich Fromm
Age: 79 †
Born: 1900
Born: March 23
Died: 1980
Died: March 18
Philosopher
Psychoanalyst
Psychologist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Frankfurt/Main
Life
Individual
Slave
Constructs
Social
Result
Feds
Death
Responsible
Slaves
Wells
Conditions
Venture
Well
Results
Machine
Enough
Wonder
Requires
Automatons
Men
Existence
Machines
Cogs
Love
Freedom
Active
Construct

More quotes by Erich Fromm

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In times of change, learners inherit the earth
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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.
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Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with others, are refuges from what man most dreads: isolation.
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Freedom does not mean license.
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Mobilizing the love of life is the only force that can defeat the love for the dead.
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Love is the only way of knowledge, which in the act of union answers my quest. In the act of loving, of giving myself, in the act of penetrating the other person, I find myself, I discover myself, I discover us both, I discover man.
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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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This Marxian sentence, repeated to the point of boredom, is misinterpreted. In reality [Karl] Marx was a religious man.
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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.
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The fact is that the culture does not have only positive effects on our intellectual and moral functions but also negative effects.
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The state of sleep is a state of freedom in which man is not occupied with the manipulation of the outside world.
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What is common to our societies is the development into a managed mass society, with big bureaucracy, managing people. The Russians do it by force. We do it by persuasion.
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Beyond the element of giving, the active characteristic of love becomes evident in the fact that it always implies certain basic elements, common to all forms of love. These are care, responsability, respect and knowledge
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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 be loved because of one's merit, because one deserves it, always leaves doubt maybe I did not please the person whom I want to love me, maybe this, or that - there is always a fear that love could disappear.
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Man absolutely cannot live by himself.
Erich Fromm
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I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself.
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I believe that the unity of man as opposed to other living things derives from the fact that man is the conscious life of himself. Man is conscious of himself, of his future, which is death, of his smallness, of his impotence he is aware of others as others man is in nature, subject to its laws even if he transcends it with his thought.
Erich Fromm
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Hate is a product of the unfulfilled life.
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For [Karl] Marx what counts is man. He is the root of everythingwhile for capitalism, the aim are things, profit, and man is only a means to gain them. As an authentically religious individual, Marx could not be other than against religion.
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