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

More quotes by Erich Fromm

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I think if you ask people what their concept of heaven is, they would say, if they are honest, that it is a big department store, with new things every week - all the money to buy them, and maybe a little more than the neighbours.
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Whether...a change from the supremacy of natural science to a new social science will take place...depends on one factor: how many brilliant, learned, disciplined, and caring men and women are attracted by the new challenge.
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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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The most important influence on a child is the character of its parents, rather than this or that single event.
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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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A dream is a microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul.
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Human history began as an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience. At this point in history the capacity to doubt, to criticize and to disobey may be all that stands between a future for mankind and the end of civilization.
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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.
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Freedom does not mean license.
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Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.
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Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in themselves.
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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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You have to stop in order to change direction.
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A society whose principles are acquisition, profit, and property produces a social character oriented around having, and once the dominant pattern is established, nobody wants to be an outsider, or indeed an outcast in order to avoid this risk everybody adapts to the majority, who have in common only their mutual antagonism.
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To love somebody is not just a strong feeling - it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.
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FORTITUDE IS THE CAPACITY TO SAY NO WHEN THE WORLD WANTS TO HEAR 'YES'
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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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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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People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love - or to be loved by - is difficult.
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Free man is by necessity insecure, thinking man by necessity uncertain.
Erich Fromm