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"Each new step into his new human existence is frightening. It always means to give up a secure state, which was relatively known, for one which is new, which one has not yet mastered. Undoubtedly, if the infant could think at the moment of the severance of the umbilical cord, he would experience the fear of dying. A loving fate protects us from this first panic. But at any new step, at any new stage of our birth, we are afraid again. We are never free from two conflicting tendencies: one to emerge from the womb, from the animal form of existence into a more human existence, from bondage to freedom; another, to return to the womb, to nature, to certainty and security."
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"The condition you're in at this moment is the product of your previous thoughts, to change your condition, change your thoughts."
Personal Development
"Life becomes difficult when out of sync with your heart-felt desires."
"The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency."
"To get matured, you must have an education in the School of Solitude!"
"Happiness is not defined by how much money you possess."
"If you want people to enter your world, you don't need to invite them; just keep your door open and keep your thoughts plain!"
Explore more quotes by Erich Fromm
"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."
"Jesus and Satan appear here as repre sentatives of two opposite principles. Satan is the representative of material consumption and of power over nature and Man. Jesus is the representative of being, and of the idea that not-having is the premise for being. The world has followed Satan's principles, since the time of the gospels."
"Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality."
"To transcend nature, to be alienated from nature and from another human being, finds man naked, ashamed. He is alone and free, yet powerless and afraid."
"The only way in which the world can be grasped ultimately lies, not in thought, but in the act, in the experience of oneness."
"Human beings had two basic orientations: HAVING and BEINGHAVING: seeks to acquire, posses things even peopleBEING: focuses on the experience; exchanging, engaging, sharing with other people."
"What holds true for the individual holds true for a society. It is never static; if it does not grow, it decays; if it does not transcend the status quo for the better, it changes for the worse. Often we, the individual or the people who make up a society, have the illusion we could stand still and not alter the given situation in the one or the other direction. This is one of the most dangerous illusions. The moment we stand still, we begin to decay."
"Human nature, though being the product of historical evolution, has certain inherent mechanisms and laws, to discover which is the task of psychology."
"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction."
"Freud was so imbued with the spirit of his culture that he could not go beyond certain limits which were set by it. These very limits became limitations for his understanding even of the sick individual, they handicapped his understanding of the normal individual and of the irrational phenomena operating in social life."
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