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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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Erich Fromm
Age: 79 †
Born: 1900
Born: March 23
Died: 1980
Died: March 18
Philosopher
Psychoanalyst
Psychologist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Frankfurt/Main
Trying
Spite
Make
Mere
Men
Hero
Handicaps
Life
Passion
Heroism
Sense
Transform
Human
Tries
Humans
Passions
Thing
Tremendous

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Free man is by necessity insecure, thinking man by necessity uncertain.
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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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In our enthusiasm to dominate nature and to produce more material good - goods - we have transformed means into ends.
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Finally one arrives at this: the state of sleep has an ambiguous function in sleep, the lack of contact with the culture brings out the worst and also the best in us.
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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.
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We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.
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Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous.
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The average American is not concerned with his society. He talks about it, but you know if one speaks of being concerned, I mean something about which one loses one's sleep, sometimes.
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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.
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Jewish legend says that the world rests on 36 just men: only thirty six, but their moral strength is immense.
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Creativity is the ability to see and to respond.
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Productive work, love and thought are possible only if a person can be, when necessary, quiet and alone. To be able to listen to oneself is the necessary condition for relating oneself to others.
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I would say, compared with the 19th century, compared with most previous history, this is as good or better a society than any which man has ever made. But that doesn't mean it is such a good one.
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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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The customer is an object to be manipulated, not a concrete person whose aims the businessman is interested to satisfy.
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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.
Erich Fromm
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If we love our fellow humans, we cannot limit our insight and our love only to others as individuals...We have to be political people, I would even say passionately involved political people, each of us in the way that best suits our own temperaments, our working lives, and our own capabilities.
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What is common to our societies is the development into a managed mass society, with big bureaucracy, managing people. The Russians do it by force. We do it by persuasion.
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[Carl Gustav] Jung was not right when he said that the unconscious message is always written clearly and so there is no need to seek to discover the distortions, because one must recognize that many dreams are more or less distortions.
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In the sleeping state, instead, one is much more oneself, even if society never ceases to intervene.
Erich Fromm