Quote11

We may know ourselves, and yet even with all the efforts we make, we do not know ourselves. We know our fellowman, and yet we do not know him, because we are not a thing, and our fellowman is not a thing. The further we reach into the depths of our being, on someone else's being, the more the goal of knowledge eludes us.

Effort - Elude - Goals

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Erich Fromm

The state of sleep is a state of freedom in which man is not occupied with the manipulation of the outside world.

Man - Manipulation - Sleeping - State - World

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Erich Fromm

When people can't handle God any more, they turn to religion.

People - Religion

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Erich Fromm

[Sigmund Freud] makes the interpretation of dreams extremely simple: it deals in substance with discovering what unconscious desires, distorted but recognizable, are hid-den in the dream. Instead, for me the dream is a mixture of thoughts and sensations that man has when he is asleep, a mental state relatively protected from the constant noise that society makes.

Deal - Discovery - Interpretation - Man - Noise - Protecting - Sensuality - Simple - State - Unconscious

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Erich Fromm

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.

Children - Growing - Help - Independence - Love - Mother - Paradox - Relationship - Requirements - Sense

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Erich Fromm

Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the same time the beginning of his freedom and the development of his reason.

Development - Freedom - Human - Liberty - Man - Reason

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Erich Fromm

Freedom does not mean license.

Meaning

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Erich Fromm

Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.

Giving - Rich

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Erich Fromm

An illusion shared by everyone becomes a reality.

Illusion - Reality

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Erich Fromm

To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern – and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values.

Ability - Accept - Age - Certainty - Conditioning - Defense - Judging - Love - Meaning - Pain - Possession - Risk - Safety - Security - Value

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Erich Fromm

To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.

Bitterness - Death - Having - Living

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Erich Fromm

The essential difference between the unhappy, neurotic type person and him of great joy is the difference between get and give.

Essence - Giving - Joy - Neurosis - Unhappy

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Erich Fromm

[Sigmund ] Freud did not under-stand that the dream is a highly creative act, written in the universal language of symbolism, and only secondarily does censorship distort those parts that the subject refuses to accept even in sleep.

Accept - Censorship - Creativity - Linguistics - Refuse - Sleeping - Universal - Writing

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Erich Fromm

Human history began with an act of disobedience and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.

Human - Obedience

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Erich Fromm

But not only medicine, engineering, and painting are arts; living itself is an art in fact, the most important and at the same time the most difficult and complex art to be practiced by man.

Art - Difficulty - Engineering - Facts - Life - Man - Medicine - Painting

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Erich Fromm

[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.

Analysis - Satisfaction

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Erich Fromm

The manual worker does not have to sell his personality. He doesn't have to sell his smile.

Personality - Work

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Erich Fromm

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.

Judging - Personality - Physician - Salesman - Wants

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Erich Fromm

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.

Answers - Existence - Greed - Human - Individualism - Life - Phenomena - Problem - Production - Rational - Spirits

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Erich Fromm

The individual citizen has very little possibility of having any influence - of making his opinion felt in the decision-making.

Citizenry - Decision - Feelings - Individual - Influence - Opinion - Possibility

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Erich Fromm

Faith is not a weak form of belief or knowledge; it is not faith in this or that; faith is the conviction about the not yet proven, the knowledge of the real possibility, the awareness of pregnancy.

Belief - Conviction - Faith - Possibility - Pregnancy - Proof - Weakness

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Erich Fromm

There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started out with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which fails so regularly, as love.

Activity - Enterprising - Expectation - Failing - Hope - Love

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Erich Fromm

Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.

Acquiring - Love - Mother - Peace

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Erich Fromm

Men are born equal but they are also born different.

Culture - Diversity - Equality - Man - Respect

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Erich Fromm

If I am what I have and if I lose what I have who then am I?

Loss

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Erich Fromm

When blended with sexuality, the death instinct is transformed into more harmless impulses expressed in sadism or masochism.

Impulse - Instinct - Masochism - Sadism - Sexuality - Transformation

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Erich Fromm

Once they are through the process of education, most people lose the capacity of wondering, of being surprised. They feel they ought to know everything, and hence that it is a sign of ignorance to be surprised or puzzled by anything.

Education - Feelings - Ignorance - Loss - People - Surprise - Wonder

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Erich Fromm

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.

Answers - Giving - Man - Quest - Unions

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Erich Fromm

In the dominant Western religious system, the love of God is essentially the same as the belief in God, in God’s existence, God’s justice, God’s love. The love of God is essentially a thought experience. In the Eastern religions and in mysticism, the love of God is an intense feeling experience of oneness, inseparably linked with the expression of this love in every act of living.

Belief - Existence - Feelings - Judging - Mysticism - Religion

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Erich Fromm

Even if man's hunger and thirst and his sexual strivings are completely satisfied, 'he' is not satisfied. In contrast to the animal his most compelling problems are not solved then, they only begin. He strives for power or for love, or for destruction, he risks his life for religious, for political, for humanistic ideals, and these strivings are what constitutes and characterizes the peculiarity of human life.

Animals - Destructiveness - Human - Man - Politics - Problem - Religion - Risk - Satisfaction

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Erich Fromm

Man may be defined as the animal that can say ''I,'' that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.

Animals - Identity - Man

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Erich Fromm

To love one person productively means to be related to his human core, to him as representing mankind. Love for one individual, in so far as it is divorced from love for man, can refer only to the superficial and to the accidental; of necessity it remains shallow.

Divorce - Human - Individual - Man - Mankind - Meaning

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Erich Fromm

Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.

Life - Love - People - Personality - Value

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