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To take the difficulties, setbacks and sorrows of life as a challenge to overcome makes us stronger, rather than unjust punishment which should not happen to us, requires faith and courage.

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
Happen
Overcoming
Brainstorming
Rather
Requires
Setbacks
Faith
Difficulty
Setback
Makes
Challenge
Sorrows
Happens
Sorrow
Unjust
Take
Stronger
Difficulties
Thinking
Courage
Overcome
Life
Challenges
Punishment

More quotes by Erich Fromm

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To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.
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FORTITUDE IS THE CAPACITY TO SAY NO WHEN THE WORLD WANTS TO HEAR 'YES'
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The average American has separated his private life from his existence as a member of his society, and leaves that to the specialists in the government to take care of.
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I need you because I love you.
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We substitute, or we rather hide, this fear of real intimacy by a superficial kind of friendliness, which is quite nice, but nevertheless, very shallow.
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Exploitation and manipulation produce boredom and triviality they cripple man, and all factors that make man into a psychic cripple turn him also into a sadist or a destroyer.
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Free man is by necessity insecure, thinking man by necessity uncertain.
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Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.
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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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We talk about equality, about happiness, about freedom - and about the spiritual values of religion, and about God - and in our daily life, we act on principles which are different, and partly contradictory.
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Society must be organized in such a way that mans social, loving nature is not separated from his social existence, but becomes one with it.
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If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature.
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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 misunderstanding seems to me to lie in a confusion between the human necessities which I consider part of human nature, and the human necessities as they appear as drives, needs, passions, etc., in any given historical period.
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Critical and radical thought will only bear fruit when it is blended with the most precious quality man is endowed with - the love of life
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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.
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In the 19th century inhumanity meant cruelty in the 20th century it means schizoid self-alienation.
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Man absolutely cannot live by himself.
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The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high it is the loss of his self.
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Man can never stand still. He must find solutions to this contradiction, and ever better solutions to the extent to which reality enables him.
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