Quote

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

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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
Find
Union
Giving
Unions
Way
Discover
Men
Loving
Love
Answers
Knowledge
Penetrating
Persons
Quests
Person
Quest

More quotes by 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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The lust for power is not rooted in strength but in weakness.
Erich Fromm
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To love somebody is not just a strong feeling - it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.
Erich Fromm
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To be loved because of one's merit, because one deserves it, always leaves doubt maybe I did not please the person whom I want to love me, maybe this, or that - there is always a fear that love could disappear.
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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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Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.
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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. . . freedom to creat and construct, to wonder and to venture. Such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible, not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine . . . It is not enough that men are not slaves if social conditions further the existence of automatons, the result will not be love of life, but love of death.
Erich Fromm
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You have to stop in order to change direction.
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 criterion of mental health is not one of individual adjustment to a given social order, but a universal one, valid for all men, of giving a satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
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.
Erich Fromm
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The fact is that the culture does not have only positive effects on our intellectual and moral functions but also negative effects.
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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The narcissistic, the domineering, the possessive woman can succeed in being a loving mother as long as the child is small. Only the really loving woman, the woman who is happier in giving than in taking, who is firmly rooted in her own existence, can be a loving mother when the child is in the process of separation.
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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The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology.
Erich Fromm
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We have faith in the potentialities of others, of ourselves, and of mankind because, and only to the degree to which, we have experienced the growth of our own potentialities, the reality of growth in ourselves, the strength of our own power of reason and love.
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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Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.
Erich Fromm