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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
Faith
Form
Alienated
Pessimism
Optimism
Despair

More quotes by Erich Fromm

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Mother's love always peace as it not to be acquired nor deserved.
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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.
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I want to mention that Marx shares something, if you don't mind the comparison, with the Old Testament: many people talk about him, but nobody has read him.
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Creativity is the ability to see and to respond.
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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.
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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.
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Ger-mans love the ambiguous word, verbal assonances as ends in themselves,vague concepts. Anglosaxons are more clear.
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Free man is by necessity insecure, thinking man by necessity uncertain.
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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 may be defined as the animal that can say ''I,'' that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.
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We are not on the way to greater individualism, but are becoming an increasingly manipulated mass civilization.
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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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Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.
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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.
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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.
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 are not only less reasonable and less decent in our dreams... we are also more inteligent, wiser and capable of better judgment when we are asleep than when we are awake.
Erich Fromm
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In the 19th century inhumanity meant cruelty in the 20th century it means schizoid self-alienation.
Erich Fromm
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I think American man unconsciously hates his work very often, because he feels trapped by it... imprisoned by it... because he feels that he is spending most of his energy for something which has no meaning in itself.
Erich Fromm
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The most important influence on a child is the character of its parents, rather than this or that single event.
Erich Fromm