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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.

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
Fear
Substitutes
Real
Superficial
Kind
Nevertheless
Intimacy
Hide
Quite
Friendliness
Nice
Substitute
Rather
Shallow

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Boredom is nothing but the experience of a paralysis of our productive powers and the sense of unaliveness. Among the evils of life, there are few which are as painful as boredom, and consequently every attempt is made to avoid it.
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Critical and radical thought will only bear fruit when it is blended with the most precious quality man is endowed with - the love of life
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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.
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Man today being concerned with production and consumption as ends in themselves, has very little engergy time to devote himself to the true religious experience.
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Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
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[Carl Gustav] Jung was not right when he said that the unconscious message is always written clearly and so there is no need to seek to discover the distortions, because one must recognize that many dreams are more or less distortions.
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To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.
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The mother's and father's attitudes toward the child correspond to the child's own needs.... Mother has the function of making himsecure in life, father has the function of teaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems with which the particular society the child has been born into confronts him.
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The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent.
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