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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."
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Exlpore more Certainty quotes
"A bird in hand is a certainty. But a bird in the bush may sing."
"Could we have prevented in 100% certainty? I don't think anything is that certain. However, we would have had a very, very good chance for preventing it."
"When we deal with questions relating to principles of law and their applications, we do not suddenly rise into a stratosphere of icy certainty."
"And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human."
"The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind."
Explore more quotes by Erich Fromm
"Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?"
"The problem of knowing man is parallel to the religious problem of knowing God. In conventional Western theology the attempt is made to know God by thought, to make statements about God. It is assumed that I can know God in my thought. In mysticism, which is the consequent outcome of monotheism, the attempt is given up to know God by thought, and it is replaced by the experience of union with God in which there is no more room-and no need-for knowledge about God."
"Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self."
"If America and the Western world continue in their state of unconscious hopelessness, lack of faith and of fortitude, it is predictable that they will not be able to resist the temptation of the big bang by nuclear weapons, which would end all problems - overpopulation, boredom, and hunger - since it would do away with all life."
"The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst must emphasize that the subject of sociology, society, in reality[,] consists of individuals, and that it is these human beings, rather than an abstract society as such, whose actions, thoughts, and feelings are the object of sociological research."Psychoanalysis and sociology. Pp. 37-39 inCritical theory and society: A reader, edited by S. Bronner and D. Kellner. New York: Routledge."
"The development of man's intellectual capacities has far outstripped the development of his emotions. Man's brain lives in the twentieth century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age. The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself."
"To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable."
"What the psychological analysis of doctrines can show is the subjective motivations which make a person aware of certain problems and make him seek answers in certain directions. Any kind of thought, true or false, is motivated by the subjective needs and interests of the person who is thinking. It happens that some interests are furthered by finding the truth, others by destroying it."
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