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The lack of objectivity, as far as foreign nations are concerned, is notorious. From one day to another, another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while ones own nation stands for everything that is good and noble. Every action of the enemy is judged by one standardevery action of oneself by another. Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals which they serve.
-Erich Fromm
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Alienation
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By alienation is meant a mode of experience in which the person experiences himself as an alien. He has become, one might say, estranged from himself. He does not experience himself as the center of his world, as the creator of his own acts -- but his acts and their consequences have become his masters, whom he obeys, or whom he may even worship. The alienated person is out of touch with himself as he is out of touch with any other person. He, like the others, is experienced as things are experienced; with the senses and with common sense, but at the same time without being related to oneself and to the world outside positively.
-Erich Fromm
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Attachment
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The kind of relatedness to the world may be noble or trivial, but even being related to the basest kind of pattern is immensely preferable to being alone.
-Erich Fromm
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Charity
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Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.
-Erich Fromm
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Consumerism
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We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.
-Erich Fromm
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Control
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Authority is not a quality one person has, in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him.
-Erich Fromm
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Creativity
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Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
-Erich Fromm
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Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies.
-Erich Fromm
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Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.
-Erich Fromm
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Death
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To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.
-Erich Fromm
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Destruction
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That man can destroy life is just as miraculous a feat as that he can create it, for life is the miracle, the inexplicable. In the act of destruction, man sets himself above life; he transcends himself as a creature. Thus, the ultimate choice for a man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate.
-Erich Fromm, The Sane Society
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Discovery
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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.
-Erich Fromm
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Doubt
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The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
-Erich Fromm
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Dreams
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We all dream; we do not understand our dreams, yet we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sleep minds, strange at least by comparison with the logical, purposeful doings of our minds when we are awake.
-Erich Fromm, The Forgotten Language
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Equality
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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.
-Erich Fromm
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Faith
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Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.
-Erich Fromm
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Future, The
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The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. But given man's nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become Golems, they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life.
-Erich Fromm
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Greed
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Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.
-Erich Fromm
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Identity
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Man may be defined as the animal that can say I, that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.
-Erich Fromm
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Integrity
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Integrity simple means not violating one's own identity.
-Erich Fromm
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Intelligence
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Reason is man's faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man's ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. 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.
-Erich Fromm
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Life
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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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Love
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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.
-Erich Fromm
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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
-Erich Fromm
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In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.
-Erich Fromm
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Books by and about Erich Fromm