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Boredom is nothing but the experience of a paralysis of our productive powers.

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
Experience
Nothing
Paralysis
Boredom
Productive
Powers
Bored
Blessing

More quotes by 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 would define myself as a Marxian, and that means of course also as a humanist.
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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.
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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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Giving is the highest expression of potency.
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Actually, if you take the average American, and studies have shown that, he is really concerned only with private affairs that is to say, with his health, his money and family affairs.
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Modern capitalism needs men who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers who want to consume more and more and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated ... what is the outcome? Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow man and from nature.
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We have faith in the potentialities of others, of ourselves, and of mankind because, and only to the degree to which, we have experienced the growth of our own potentialities, the reality of growth in ourselves, the strength of our own power of reason and love.
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That is not quite enough to make one happy, if one spends eight hours a day in something which in itself has no meaning and interest, except that one gains money from it.
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You have to stop to change direction.
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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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Just as love is an orientation which refers to all objects and is incompatible with the restriction to one object, so is reason a human faculty which must embrace the whole of the world with which man is confronted.
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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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Politics and religious leaders [are hindered] by their egotism.
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As we ascend the social ladder, viciousness wears a thicker mask.
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The experience of separateness arouses anxiety it is, indeed, the source of all anxiety.
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Love is active penetration of the other person, in which my desire to know is stilled by union. In the act of fusion I know you, I know myself, I know everybody - and I know nothing.
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Mother's love always peace as it not to be acquired nor deserved.
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The narcissistic, the domineering, the possessive woman can succeed in being a loving mother as long as the child is small. Only the really loving woman, the woman who is happier in giving than in taking, who is firmly rooted in her own existence, can be a loving mother when the child is in the process of separation.
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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.
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