"An illusion shared by everyone becomes a reality."
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Quote collection
Erich Fromm quotes (page 4 of 22)
426 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"If the handbag could think, it would have a terrific inferiority feeling, because, not having been bought, it would feel useless."
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"Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love."
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"Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness."
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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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"One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often."
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"We try to evade the question of existence with property, prestige, power, possession, production, fun, and, ultimately, by trying to forget that we- that I- exist. No matter how much he thinks of God or goes to church, or how much he believes in religious ideas , if he, the whole man, is deaf to the question of existence, if he does not have an answer to it, he is marking time, and he lives and dies like one of the million things he produces. He thinks of God, instead of experiencing God."
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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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"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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"You have to stop in order to change direction."
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"Man today is fascinated by the possibility of buying, more, better, and especially, new things. He is consumption hungry... To buy the latest gadget, the latest model of anything that is on the market, is the dream of everybody, in comparison to which the real pleasure in use is quite secondary. Modern man, if the dared to be articulate about his concept of heaven, would describe a vision which would look like the biggest department store in the world."
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"Organized religion is in substance a mystification, a means of hiding the wickedness of the social system. If the Christian principles of love, equality, and freedom were really practiced instead of only preached, there would be no need for a special institution(the church) to take care of those principles."
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"Love is an act of faith."
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"The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal."
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"Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?"
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"There is undoubtedly a difference between people who manipulate other people and people who create things."
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"We are not only less reasonable and less decent in our dreams... we are also more inteligent, wiser and capable of better judgment when we are asleep than when we are awake."
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"Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality."
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"FORTITUDE IS THE CAPACITY TO SAY NO WHEN THE WORLD WANTS TO HEAR 'YES'"
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"Intellectuals are hindered on the way to being, by their narcissism."
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