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

More quotes by 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.
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Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one's capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable.
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Just as love is an orientation which refers to all objects and is incompatible with the restriction to one object, so is reason a human faculty which must embrace the whole of the world with which man is confronted.
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Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.
Erich Fromm
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The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself indeed, we should be fully born when we die.
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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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We talk about equality, about happiness, about freedom - and about the spiritual values of religion, and about God - and in our daily life, we act on principles which are different, and partly contradictory.
Erich Fromm
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Free man is by necessity insecure, thinking man by necessity uncertain.
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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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We are terribly imaginative, as far as technique in science is concerned. As far as changes in social arrangements are concerned, we lack utterly in imagination.
Erich Fromm
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Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love.
Erich Fromm
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There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.
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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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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We are concerned with things. We are concerned with success. We are concerned with money. We are concerned with instrumentalities.
Erich Fromm
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If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.
Erich Fromm
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The need for the creation of collective art and ritual on a nonclerical basis is at least as important as literacy and higher education.
Erich Fromm
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The average American has separated his private life from his existence as a member of his society, and leaves that to the specialists in the government to take care of.
Erich Fromm
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Can freedom become a burden, too heavy for man to bear, something he tries to escape from?..Is there not also, perhaps, besides an innate desire for freedom, an instinctive wish for submission?
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Our main way of relating ourselves to others is like things relate themselves to things on the market. We want to exchange our own personality - or as one says sometimes, our personality package - for something.
Erich Fromm