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I would say our social relationships are relatively shallow. We are actually afraid to be intimate, with people - many people even with their wives and husbands.

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
Actually
Wives
Social
Relatively
Many
Shallow
Even
Intimate
Would
Relationships
People
Husband
Afraid
Wife
Husbands

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Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions.
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Happiness is a very proud word of our whole cultural heritage.
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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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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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If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can be validated.
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Man does not only sell commodities, he sells himself and feels himself to be a commodity.
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When blended with sexuality, the death instinct is transformed into more harmless impulses expressed in sadism or masochism.
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People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love - or to be loved by - is difficult.
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If you take a salesman, who sells a useless commodity, he feels like a fraud.
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People do not see that the main question is not : Am I loved? which is to a large extent the question : Am I approved of? Am I protected? Am I admired? The main question is: Can I love?
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I would define myself as a Marxian, and that means of course also as a humanist.
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It is a tragedy that most of us die before we have begun to live.
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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.
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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
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Whether...a change from the supremacy of natural science to a new social science will take place...depends on one factor: how many brilliant, learned, disciplined, and caring men and women are attracted by the new challenge.
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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.
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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 love somebody is not just a strong feeling - it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.
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There is only one reality: the act of feeling ourselves in the process of making choices.
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