Quote

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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Erich Fromm
Age: 79 †
Born: 1900
Born: March 23
Died: 1980
Died: March 18
Philosopher
Psychoanalyst
Psychologist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Frankfurt/Main
Wealth
Joyous
Joy
Vitality
Alive
Hence
Lying
Receiving
Overflowing
Experience
Spending
Potency
Power
Highest
Heightened
Giving
Expression
Deprivation
Love
Strength
Fills

More quotes by 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.
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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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I would say love is something everybody talks about, and the need for love is one of the most basic needs of man, namely the experience of union with another being - of becoming one with another being.
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In our enthusiasm to dominate nature and to produce more material good - goods - we have transformed means into ends.
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We have a religious renaissance today in America, as many people say. I would say this religious renaissance, ninety percent of it is the greatest danger true religious experience has ever been confronted with.
Erich Fromm
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The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself indeed, we should be fully born when we die.
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Modern man thinks he loses something - time - when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains, except kill it.
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Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the same time the beginning of his freedom and the development of his reason.
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I would say our social relationships are relatively shallow. We are actually afraid to be intimate, with people - many people even with their wives and husbands.
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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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Hate is a product of the unfulfilled life.
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The average American is not concerned with his society. He talks about it, but you know if one speaks of being concerned, I mean something about which one loses one's sleep, sometimes.
Erich Fromm
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Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar, and you'll live as you've never lived before.
Erich Fromm
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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.
Erich Fromm
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We are concerned with things. We are concerned with success. We are concerned with money. We are concerned with instrumentalities.
Erich Fromm
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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.
Erich Fromm
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Infantile love follows the principle: I love because I am loved. Mature love follows the principle: I am loved because I love. Immature love says: I love you because I need you. Mature love says: I need you because I love you.
Erich Fromm
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Giving is the highest expression of potency.
Erich Fromm
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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.
Erich Fromm
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There is only one reality: the act of feeling ourselves in the process of making choices.
Erich Fromm