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Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm Quotes

Psychologist

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Famous Erich Fromm Quotes

“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.”

IfsLifeHumansImportantProblemSpiritSocialAnswersLove IsExistenceConcernedStructureProductionsRationalConclusionRadicalPhenomenonCommodityGreedyHuman ExistenceConformistSocial StructureIndividualisticRadical ChangeNon Conformist
Author:Erich Fromm
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“One of the worst forms of mental suffering is boredom, not knowing what to do with oneself and one's life. Even if man had no monetary, or any other reward, he would be eager to spend his energy in some meaningful way because he could not stand the boredom which inactivity produces.”

IfsMenWayWould BeFormSufferingEnergyKnowingWorstProduceRewardsOneselfMeaningfulBoredomNot KnowingMonetaryInactivityKnowing What To Do
Book:The Sane Society
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“Also in contemporary Western society the union with the group is the prevalent way of overcoming separateness. It is a union which the individual self disappears to a large extent, and where the aim is to belong to the heard. If I am like everybody else, if I have no feeling or thoughts which make me different, if I conform in custom, dress, ideas, to the pattern of the group, I am saved: saved from the frightening experience of aloneness.”

IfsWayIdeasDifferentSelfFeelingsIndividualHeardGroupsOvercomingAimDressesUnionsWesternPatternsDisappearSavedContemporaryCustomsFrighteningConformSeparatenessWestern SocietyArt Of Loving
Book:THE ART OF LOVING
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“Can one have love? If we could, love would need to be a thing, a substance that one can have, own, possess. The truth is, there is no such thing as love. Love is an abstraction, perhaps a goddess or an alien being, although nobody has ever seen this goddess. In reality, there exists only the act of loving. To love is a productive activity. It implies caring for, knowing, responding, affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing to life, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self increasing.”

IfsLoveNeedsMeanPersonsIdeasSelfRealityProcessEnjoyLove IsKnowingTreePaintingTruth IsActivityCaringAliensSubstanceProductiveGoddessAbstractionRespondingAffirming
Author:Erich Fromm
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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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Book:The art of being
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“There is no word in our language which has been so much misused and prostituted as the word love. It has been preached by those who were ready to condone every cruelty if it served their purpose; it has been used as a disguise under which to force people into sacrificing their own happiness, into submitting their whole self to those who profited from this surrender. [...] It has been made so empty that for many people love may mean no more than that two people have lived together for twenty years just without fighting more often than once a week.”

PeopleIfsLoveYearsMayMeanHas BeensMadeTwoSelfWholeAgeTogetherUsedPurposeFightingLanguageForceSacrificeWeekReadyEmptyTwentiesSurrenderCrueltyDisguiseMisusedWords Love
Book:Love, Sexuality, and Matriarchy: About Gender
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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.”

IfsMenBelieveFactsLawI BelieveSubjectsConsciousUnityLiving ThingsImpotenceSmallness
Book:On Being Human
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“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.”

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Book:Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics
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