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Can freedom become a burden, too heavy for man to bear, something he tries to escape from?..Is there not also, perhaps, besides an innate desire for freedom, an instinctive wish for submission?

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
Also
Bear
Trying
Heavy
Instinctive
Something
Bears
Submission
Men
Perhaps
Innate
Freedom
Besides
Wish
Tries
Desire
Escape
Become
Burden

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The affirmation of one's own life, happiness, growth and freedom, is rooted in one's capacity to love.
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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?
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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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We've wanted to produce more in the 19th century and the 20th century in order to give man the possibility for more dignified human life but actually what has happened is that production and consumption have become means - have ceased to be means and have become ends, and we are production crazy and consumption crazy.
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All genuine ideals have one thing in common: they express the desire for something which is not yet accomplished but which is desirable for the purpose of the growth and happiness of the individual.
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Free man is by necessity insecure, thinking man by necessity uncertain.
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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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[Sigmund ] Freud did not under-stand that the dream is a highly creative act, written in the universal language of symbolism, and only secondarily does censorship distort those parts that the subject refuses to accept even in sleep.
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If the Russians claim they are Socialist, this is just, I would say, a lie. They have no socialism at all. They have what I would call a state capitalism.
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An illusion shared by everyone becomes a reality.
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Independent of others and in concert with others, your main task in life is to do what you can best do and become what you can potentially be.
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To be concentrated means to live fully in the present.
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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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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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I think our danger is that we talk one thing, and we feel and act another thing.
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Man may be defined as the animal that can say ''I,'' that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.
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A dream is a microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul.
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The revolutionary and critical thinker is in a certain way always outside of his society while of course he is at the same time also in it.
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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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