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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.

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
Given
Confusion
Nature
Appear
Part
Period
Seems
Historical
Necessities
Human
Consider
Misunderstanding
Humans
Periods
Drives
Important
Passion
Etc
Needs
Lying
Passions

More quotes by Erich Fromm

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FORTITUDE IS THE CAPACITY TO SAY NO WHEN THE WORLD WANTS TO HEAR 'YES'
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.
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For [Karl] Marx what counts is man. He is the root of everythingwhile for capitalism, the aim are things, profit, and man is only a means to gain them. As an authentically religious individual, Marx could not be other than against religion.
Erich Fromm
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Education makes machines which act like men and produces men who act like machines.
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 the Russians claim they are Socialist, this is just, I would say, a lie. They have no socialism at all. They have what I would call a state capitalism.
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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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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The essential difference between the unhappy, neurotic type person and him of great joy is the difference between get and give.
Erich Fromm
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I think if you ask people what their concept of heaven is, they would say, if they are honest, that it is a big department store, with new things every week - all the money to buy them, and maybe a little more than the neighbours.
Erich Fromm
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Beyond the element of giving, the active characteristic of love becomes evident in the fact that it always implies certain basic elements, common to all forms of love. These are care, responsability, respect and knowledge
Erich Fromm
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Man does not only sell commodities, he sells himself and feels himself to be a commodity.
Erich Fromm
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Ger-mans love the ambiguous word, verbal assonances as ends in themselves,vague concepts. Anglosaxons are more clear.
Erich Fromm
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In the sleeping state, instead, one is much more oneself, even if society never ceases to intervene.
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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[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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Loving becomes, and the ability to love, becomes one of the most important things in life.
Erich Fromm
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Only when man succeeds in developing his reason and love further than he has done so far, only when he can build a world based on human solidarity and justice, only when he can feel rooted in the experience of universal brotherliness, will he have tr
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.
Erich Fromm
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It seems that great minds a hundred years ago saw what would happen today or tomorrow, while we to whom it is happening blind ourselves in order not to be disturbed in our daily routine.
Erich Fromm