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Creativity is the ability to see and to respond.

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
Respond
Creativity
Acting
Ability
Action

More quotes by Erich Fromm

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Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?
Erich Fromm
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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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Our main way of relating ourselves to others is like things relate themselves to things on the market. We want to exchange our own personality - or as one says sometimes, our personality package - for something.
Erich Fromm
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I believe that if an individual is not on the path to transcending his society and seeing in what way it furthers or impedes the development of human potential, he cannot enter into intimate contact with his humanity.
Erich Fromm
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If you do not smile, you are judged lacking in a 'pleasing personality' - and you need to have a pleasing personality if you want to sell your services, whether as a waitress, a salesman, or a physician.
Erich Fromm
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We talk a great deal about Russia today, and I'm afraid that in twenty years, we and Russia will be more similar than different.
Erich Fromm
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Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending it. He has to find principles of action and decision-making which replace the principles of instincts.
Erich Fromm
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The lust for power is not rooted in strength but in weakness.
Erich Fromm
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The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. But given man's nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become ''Golems',' they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life.
Erich Fromm
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If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can be validated.
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.
Erich Fromm
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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.
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.
Erich Fromm
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There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.
Erich Fromm
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Mother's love always peace as it not to be acquired nor deserved.
Erich Fromm
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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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The need for the creation of collective art and ritual on a nonclerical basis is at least as important as literacy and higher education.
Erich Fromm
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Greedhas no satiation point, since its consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression it is meant to overcome.
Erich Fromm
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I would say, compared with the 19th century, compared with most previous history, this is as good or better a society than any which man has ever made. But that doesn't mean it is such a good one.
Erich Fromm
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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.
Erich Fromm