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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
Men
Miscellaneous
Illusion
Supposed
Wants
Modern
Actually
Lives

More quotes by Erich Fromm

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To live is to be born every minute. Death occurs when birth stops.
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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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Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions.
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A new question has arisen in modern man's mind, the question, namely, whether life is worth living...No sensible answer can be given to the question...because the question does not make any sense.
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An illusion shared by everyone becomes a reality.
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If I am attached to another person because I cannot stand on my own two feet, he or she may be a life saver, but the relationship is not one of love.
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There is only one reality: the act of feeling ourselves in the process of making choices.
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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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Man may be defined as the animal that can say ''I,'' that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.
Erich Fromm
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Man today being concerned with production and consumption as ends in themselves, has very little engergy time to devote himself to the true religious experience.
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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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Mother's love always peace as it not to be acquired nor deserved.
Erich Fromm
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For [Sigmund ] Freud, the manifest dream, that is that which we remember after waking,is like a code message, that can be interpreted, provided the right key is avail-able, for example the method of free association.
Erich Fromm
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When blended with sexuality, the death instinct is transformed into more harmless impulses expressed in sadism or masochism.
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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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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It is true that one has to think first and then to act - but it's also true that if one has no possibility of acting, one's thinking kind of becomes empty and stupid.
Erich Fromm
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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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In our enthusiasm to dominate nature and to produce more material good - goods - we have transformed means into ends.
Erich Fromm
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Love is the only way of knowledge, which in the act of union answers my quest. In the act of loving, of giving myself, in the act of penetrating the other person, I find myself, I discover myself, I discover us both, I discover man.
Erich Fromm