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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.

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
Lives
Men
Miscellaneous
Illusion
Supposed
Wants
Modern
Actually

More quotes by Erich Fromm

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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.
Erich Fromm
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The only concern which I have today is that we have a policy, a foreign policy, which enables us to avoid a catastrophe which, if one understands it properly, is indescribable.
Erich Fromm
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Man's biological weakness is the condition of human culture.
Erich Fromm
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If you take a salesman, who sells a useless commodity, he feels like a fraud.
Erich Fromm
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The affirmation of one's own life, happiness, growth and freedom, is rooted in one's capacity to love.
Erich Fromm
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It seems that great minds a hundred years ago saw what would happen today or tomorrow, while we to whom it is happening blind ourselves in order not to be disturbed in our daily routine.
Erich Fromm
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There is only one reality: the act of feeling ourselves in the process of making choices.
Erich Fromm
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I think our danger is that we talk one thing, and we feel and act another thing.
Erich Fromm
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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.
Erich Fromm
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Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance of the individual voter.
Erich Fromm
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The human passions transform man from a mere thing into a hero, into a being that in spite of tremendous handicaps tries to make sense of life.
Erich Fromm
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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.
Erich Fromm
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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.
Erich Fromm
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It is a tragedy that most of us die before we have begun to live.
Erich Fromm
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People do not see that the main question is not : Am I loved? which is to a large extent the question : Am I approved of? Am I protected? Am I admired? The main question is: Can I love?
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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I believe indeed that to rescue the humanist tradition of the last decades is of the utmost importance, and that Victor Serge is one of the outstanding personalities representing the socialist aspect of humanism.
Erich Fromm
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To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness
Erich Fromm
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I would say love is something everybody talks about, and the need for love is one of the most basic needs of man, namely the experience of union with another being - of becoming one with another being.
Erich Fromm
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Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.
Erich Fromm