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An illusion shared by everyone becomes a reality.

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
Illusion
Becomes
Everyone
Reality
Shared

More quotes by Erich Fromm

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Modern capitalism needs men who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers who want to consume more and more and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated ... what is the outcome? Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow man and from nature.
Erich Fromm
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Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair.
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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A vast sector of modern advertising... does not appeal to reason but to emotion like any other kind of hypnoid suggestion, it tries to impress its objects emotionally and then make them submit intellectually.
Erich Fromm
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In fact, there are very important writings of Marx which are not even translated into English.
Erich Fromm
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Free man is by necessity insecure, thinking man by necessity uncertain.
Erich Fromm
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Greedhas no satiation point, since its consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression it is meant to overcome.
Erich Fromm
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The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind - not the fiend or the sadist.
Erich Fromm
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Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.
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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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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That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.
Erich Fromm
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People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love - or to be loved by - is difficult.
Erich Fromm
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Infantile love follows the principle: I love because I am loved. Mature love follows the principle: I am loved because I love. Immature love says: I love you because I need you. Mature love says: I need you because I love you.
Erich Fromm
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The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have.
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
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There is nothing inhuman, evil, or irrational which does not give some comfort, provided it is shared by a group.
Erich Fromm
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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.
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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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.
Erich Fromm