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Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair.

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
Alienated
Pessimism
Optimism
Despair
Faith
Form

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The most important influence on a child is the character of its parents, rather than this or that single event.
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It is essential... that discipline should not be practised like a rule imposed on oneself from the outside, but that it becomes an expression of one's own will that it is felt as pleasant, and that one slowly accustoms oneself to a kind of behaviour which one would eventually miss, if one stopped practising it.
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In fact, there are very important writings of Marx which are not even translated into English.
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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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[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.
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We substitute, or we rather hide, this fear of real intimacy by a superficial kind of friendliness, which is quite nice, but nevertheless, very shallow.
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To live is to be born every minute. Death occurs when birth stops.
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Love is active penetration of the other person, in which my desire to know is stilled by union. In the act of fusion I know you, I know myself, I know everybody - and I know nothing.
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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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This Marxian sentence, repeated to the point of boredom, is misinterpreted. In reality [Karl] Marx was a religious man.
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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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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.
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It is notorious that no war between countries elicits as much hate and cruelty as civil war, in which there is no lack of acquaintance between the two warring sides.
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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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According to me [Sigmund ] Freud did not notice that the dream expresses the inner experiences in a symbolic form,resembling in that, poetry or other art forms.
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We are all equal in the sense that no man must mean - must be - the means for the purposes of another man but each individual is an end in itself.
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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.
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Thus, the ultimate choice for a man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate.
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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.
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Education makes machines which act like men and produces men who act like machines.
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