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I believe that man is the product of natural evolution that is born from the conflict of being a prisoner and separated from nature, and from the need to find unity and harmony with it.

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
Born
Prisoner
Nature
Unity
Find
Product
Need
Harmony
Needs
Evolution
Believe
Conflict
Men
Products
Natural
Separated

More quotes by Erich Fromm

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Human history began as an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience. At this point in history the capacity to doubt, to criticize and to disobey may be all that stands between a future for mankind and the end of civilization.
Erich Fromm
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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.
Erich Fromm
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Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.
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To take the difficulties, setbacks and sorrows of life as a challenge to overcome makes us stronger, rather than unjust punishment which should not happen to us, requires faith and courage.
Erich Fromm
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Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one's identity, in the many ways in which such violation is possible.
Erich Fromm
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Love is an active power in man a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unite him with others love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity.
Erich Fromm
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The existential split in man would be unbearable could he not establish a sense of unity within himself and with the natural and human world outside.
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 paradoxical and tragic situation of man is that his conscience is weakest when he needs it most.
Erich Fromm
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When blended with sexuality, the death instinct is transformed into more harmless impulses expressed in sadism or masochism.
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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The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity.
Erich Fromm
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. . . freedom to creat and construct, to wonder and to venture. Such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible, not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine . . . It is not enough that men are not slaves if social conditions further the existence of automatons, the result will not be love of life, but love of death.
Erich Fromm
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I understand by socialism a society in which the aim of production is not profit, but the use. In which the individual citizen participates responsibly in his work, and in the whole social organization, and in which he is not a means who is employed by capital.
Erich Fromm
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When people can see a vision and simultaneously recognize what can be done step by step in a concrete way to achieve it, they will begin to feel encouragement and enthusiasm instead of fright.
Erich Fromm
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It takes a moment to tell someone you love them, but it takes a lifetime to prove it.
Erich Fromm
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Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar, and you'll live as you've never lived before.
Erich Fromm
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Man always dies before he is fully born.
Erich Fromm
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Man can never stand still. He must find solutions to this contradiction, and ever better solutions to the extent to which reality enables him.
Erich Fromm
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If we love our fellow humans, we cannot limit our insight and our love only to others as individuals...We have to be political people, I would even say passionately involved political people, each of us in the way that best suits our own temperaments, our working lives, and our own capabilities.
Erich Fromm