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What is common to our societies is the development into a managed mass society, with big bureaucracy, managing people. The Russians do it by force. We do it by persuasion.

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
People
Managed
Societies
Mass
Development
Society
Managing
Common
Russians
Bigs
Persuasion
Force
Bureaucracy

More quotes by Erich Fromm

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Man can be conditioned to behave in almost every desired way but only almost.
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A society whose principles are acquisition, profit, and property produces a social character oriented around having, and once the dominant pattern is established, nobody wants to be an outsider, or indeed an outcast in order to avoid this risk everybody adapts to the majority, who have in common only their mutual antagonism.
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Modern capitalism needs men who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers who want to consume more and more and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated ... what is the outcome? Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow man and from nature.
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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.
Erich Fromm
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Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
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Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous.
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Infantile love follows the principle: I love because I am loved. Mature love follows the principle: I am loved because I love. Immature love says: I love you because I need you. Mature love says: I need you because I love you.
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I would say, compared with the 19th century, compared with most previous history, this is as good or better a society than any which man has ever made. But that doesn't mean it is such a good one.
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You have to stop in order to change direction.
Erich Fromm
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It is true that one has to think first and then to act - but it's also true that if one has no possibility of acting, one's thinking kind of becomes empty and stupid.
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The essential difference between the unhappy, neurotic type person and him of great joy is the difference between get and give.
Erich Fromm
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Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.
Erich Fromm
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The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind - not the fiend or the sadist.
Erich Fromm
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Creativity is the ability to see and to respond.
Erich Fromm
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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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When people can't handle God any more, they turn to religion.
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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In the 19th century inhumanity meant cruelty in the 20th century it means schizoid self-alienation.
Erich Fromm
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If you do not smile, you are judged lacking in a 'pleasing personality' - and you need to have a pleasing personality if you want to sell your services, whether as a waitress, a salesman, or a physician.
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[Sigmund ] Freud assumes that every dream represents the satisfaction of adesire and in the last analysis, of a sexual desire that has its roots in infancy.
Erich Fromm