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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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Erich Fromm
Age: 79 †
Born: 1900
Born: March 23
Died: 1980
Died: March 18
Philosopher
Psychoanalyst
Psychologist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Frankfurt/Main
Fear
Power
Always
Irrational
Authority
Built
Side
Sides

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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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Jewish legend says that the world rests on 36 just men: only thirty six, but their moral strength is immense.
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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.
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We have a religious renaissance today in America, as many people say. I would say this religious renaissance, ninety percent of it is the greatest danger true religious experience has ever been confronted with.
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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.
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I only wish to be the fountain of love from which you drink, every drop promising eternal passion.
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Education is helping the child realise his potentialities.
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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.
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I think our danger is that we talk one thing, and we feel and act another thing.
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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
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Modern man is assailed on every side and almost without interruption by noise - of the radio, of television, of headlines, of advertising and of the cinema - of which the greatest part, far from enlightening the mind, blunts and stultifies it.
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Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair.
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In the 19th century inhumanity meant cruelty in the 20th century it means schizoid self-alienation.
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