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Man does not only sell commodities, he sells himself and feels himself to be a commodity.

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
Marketing
Sell
Sells
Doe
Feels
Men
Commodities
Commodity

More quotes by Erich Fromm

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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.
Erich Fromm
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Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the same time the beginning of his freedom and the development of his reason.
Erich Fromm
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What is for me socialism is exactly the opposite of a bureaucratically-managed culture.
Erich Fromm
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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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Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Love is not a spontaneous feeling, a thing that you fall into, but is something that requires thought, knowledge, care, giving, and respect. And it is something that is rare and difficult to find in capitalism, which commodifies human activity.
Erich Fromm
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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.
Erich Fromm
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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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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.
Erich Fromm
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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.
Erich Fromm
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Power on the one side, fear on the other, are always the buttresses on which irrational authority is built.
Erich Fromm
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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.
Erich Fromm
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It is essential... that discipline should not be practised like a rule imposed on oneself from the outside, but that it becomes an expression of one's own will that it is felt as pleasant, and that one slowly accustoms oneself to a kind of behaviour which one would eventually miss, if one stopped practising it.
Erich Fromm
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We are terribly imaginative, as far as technique in science is concerned. As far as changes in social arrangements are concerned, we lack utterly in imagination.
Erich Fromm
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Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.
Erich Fromm
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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.
Erich Fromm
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Free man is by necessity insecure, thinking man by necessity uncertain.
Erich Fromm
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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.
Erich Fromm
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Boredom is nothing but the experience of a paralysis of our productive powers.
Erich Fromm
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Infantile love follows the principle: I love because I am loved. Mature love follows the principle: I am loved because I love. Immature love says: I love you because I need you. Mature love says: I need you because I love you.
Erich Fromm
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Thus, the ultimate choice for a man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate.
Erich Fromm