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I think we got off the track, as many societies do, who follow successfully one aim, and yet are not capable of seeing at what point the pursuit of this aim prevents them from following a more total aim. That is to say, they get into a blind alley.

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
Blind
Prevents
Follow
Successfully
Capable
Societies
Seeing
Aim
Point
Total
Many
Pursuit
Think
Track
Alley
Thinking
Following
Alleys

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The fact is that the culture does not have only positive effects on our intellectual and moral functions but also negative effects.
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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.
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Man's biological weakness is the condition of human culture.
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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.
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FORTITUDE IS THE CAPACITY TO SAY NO WHEN THE WORLD WANTS TO HEAR 'YES'
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The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have.
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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.
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Man absolutely cannot live by himself.
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Love is active penetration of the other person, in which my desire to know is stilled by union. In the act of fusion I know you, I know myself, I know everybody - and I know nothing.
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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.
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I need you because I love you.
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In times of change, learners inherit the earth
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Having lost religious faith and the humanistic values bound up with it, he [man] concentrated on technical and material values and lost the capacity for deep emotional experiences, for the joy and sadness that accompany them.
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The paradoxical and tragic situation of man is that his conscience is weakest when he needs it most.
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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.
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We are not on the way to greater individualism, but are becoming an increasingly manipulated mass civilization.
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If you take a salesman, who sells a useless commodity, he feels like a fraud.
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To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness
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Education makes machines which act like men and produces men who act like machines.
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In the 19th century inhumanity meant cruelty in the 20th century it means schizoid self-alienation.
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