QUOTES by Erich Fromm
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Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.
Quote by -Erich Fromm
Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.
Quote by -Erich Fromm
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.
Quote by -Erich Fromm
Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.
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True love is like a pair of socks: you gotta have two and they've gotta match.
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Love is the only way of knowledge, which in the act of union answers my quest. In the act of loving, of giving myself, in the act of penetrating the other person, I find myself, I discover myself, I discover us both, I discover man.
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Mother's love is bliss, is peace, it need not be acquired, it need not be deserved. If it is there, it is like a blessing; if it is not there it is as if all the beauty had gone out of life.
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Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love.
Quote by -Erich Fromm
Love is hot a higher power which descends upon mn nor a duty which is imposed upon him; it is his own power by which he relates himself to the world and makes it truly his.
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The spirit of a production-centered, commodity-greedy society is such that only the non-conformist can defend himself sufficiently against it. Those who are seriously concerned with love as the only rational answer to the problem of human existence must, then, arrive at the conclusion that important and radical changes in our social structure are necessary, if love is to become a social and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon.
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Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Love is not a spontaneous feeling, a thing that you fall into, but is something that requires thought, knowledge, care, giving, and respect. And it is something that is rare and difficult to find in capitalism, which commodifies human activity.
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I believe that the experience of love is the most human and humanizing act that it is given to man to enjoy and that it, like reason, makes no sense if conceived in a partial way.
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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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The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears.
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Love is the productive form of relatedness to others and to oneself. It implies responsibility, care, respect. If it isn't productive and respectful, it isn't love, but only fear masquerading as love.
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If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem ofhuman existence, then any societywhich excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature.
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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.
Quote by -Erich Fromm
I believe that the experience of love is the most human and humanizing act that it is given to man to enjoy and that it, like reason, makes no sense if conceived in a partial way.
Quote by -Erich Fromm
I believe indeed that to rescue the humanist tradition of the last decades is of the utmost importance, and that Victor Serge is one of the outstanding personalities representing the socialist aspect of humanism.
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I believe that if an individual is not on the path to transcending his society and seeing in what way it furthers or impedes the development of human potential, he cannot enter into intimate contact with his humanity.
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As long as anyone believes that his ideal and purpose is outside him, that it is above the clouds, in the past or in the future, he will go outside himself and seek fulfillment where it cannot be found. He will look for solutions and answers at every point except where they can be found- in himself.
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I believe that none can "save" his fellow man by making a choice for him. To help him, he can indicate the possible alternatives, with sincerity and love, without being sentimental and without illusion.
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I believe that the fundamental alternative for man is the choice between "life" and "death"; between creativity and destructive violence; between reality and illusions; between objectivity and intolerance; between brotherhood-independence and dominance-submission.
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I believe that one can and must hope for a sane society that furthers man's capacity to love his fellow men, to work and create, to develop his reason and his objectivity of a sense of himself that is based on the experience of his productive energy. I believe that one can and must hope for the collective regaining of a mental health that is characterized by the capacity to love and to create...
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Society, and the family as its psycho social agent, has to solve a difficult problem: How to break a person's will without his being aware of it? Yet by a complicated process of indoctrination, rewards, punishments, and fitting ideology, it solves this task by and large so well that most people believe they are following their own will and are unaware that their will itself is conditioned and manipulated.
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I believe that the unity of man as opposed to other living things derives from the fact that man is the conscious life of himself. Man is conscious of himself, of his future, which is death, of his smallness, of his impotence; he is aware of others as others; man is in nature, subject to its laws even if he transcends it with his thought.
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I believe that love is the main key to open the doors to the "growth" of man. Love and union with someone or something outside of oneself, union that allows one to put oneself into relationship with others, to feel one with others, without limiting the sense of integrity and independence. Love is a productive orientation for which it is essential that there be present at the same time: concern, responsibility, and respect for and knowledge of the object of the union.
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The scars left from the child's defeat in the fight against irrational authority are to be found at the bottom of every neurosis.
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What are the conditions of the creative attitude, of seeing and responding, of being aware and being sensitive to what one is aware of? First of all it requires the capacity to be puzzled. Children still have the capacity to be puzzled.
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The experience of humanism is that 'nothing human is alien to me'; that I carry within myself all of humanity; that nothing which exists in any human being does not exist in myself. I am the criminal and the saint. I am the child and the adult. I am the man who lived 100000 years ago and the man who will live 100000 years from now.
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In erotic love, two people who were separate become one. In motherly love, two people who were one become separate. The mother must not only tolerate, she must wish and support the child's separation.
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Education is identical with helping the child realize his potentialities. The opposite of education is manipulation, which is based on the absence of faith in the growth of potentialities and the connection that a child will be right only if the adults put into him what is desirable and suppress what seems to be undesirable.
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The narcissistic, the domineering, the possessive woman can succeed in being a "loving" mother as long as the child is small. Only the really loving woman, the woman who is happier in giving than in taking, who is firmly rooted in her own existence, can be a loving mother when the child is in the process of separation.
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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 most important influence on a child is the character of its parents, rather than this or that single event.
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Every act of irreverence for life, every act which neglects life, which is indifferent to and wastes life, is a step towards the love of death. This choice man must make at every minute. Never were the consequences of the wrong choice as total and as irreversible as they are today. Never was the warning of the Bible so urgent: 'I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, that you and your children may live.'
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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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I think if you ask people what their concept of heaven is, they would say, if they are honest, that it is a big department store, with new things every week - all the money to buy them, and maybe a little more than the neighbours.
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Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one's capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable.
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It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas and feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consensual validation as such has no bearing on reason or mental health.
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If other people do not understand our behavior-so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being 'asocial' or 'irrational' in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them.
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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?
Quote by -Erich Fromm