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I think if you ask people what their concept of heaven is, they would say, if they are honest, that it is a big department store, with new things every week - all the money to buy them, and maybe a little more than the neighbours.

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
People
Money
Concepts
Littles
Week
Little
Honest
Neighbours
Every
Maybe
Neighbour
Things
Asks
Store
Would
Heaven
Department
Think
Religion
Stores
Thinking
Bigs
Concept

More quotes by Erich Fromm

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In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.
Erich Fromm
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There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.
Erich Fromm
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The revolutionary and critical thinker is in a certain way always outside of his society while of course he is at the same time also in it.
Erich Fromm
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We talk a great deal about Russia today, and I'm afraid that in twenty years, we and Russia will be more similar than different.
Erich Fromm
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I understand by socialism a society in which the aim of production is not profit, but the use. In which the individual citizen participates responsibly in his work, and in the whole social organization, and in which he is not a means who is employed by capital.
Erich Fromm
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Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.
Erich Fromm
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The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. But given man's nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become ''Golems',' they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life.
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
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Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.
Erich Fromm
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The state of sleep is a state of freedom in which man is not occupied with the manipulation of the outside world.
Erich Fromm
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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.
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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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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To live is to be born every minute. Death occurs when birth stops.
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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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.
Erich Fromm
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To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.
Erich Fromm
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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.
Erich Fromm
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Respect is not fear and awe it...[is]the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.
Erich Fromm
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All genuine ideals have one thing in common: they express the desire for something which is not yet accomplished but which is desirable for the purpose of the growth and happiness of the individual.
Erich Fromm