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Can Freedom Become A Burden, Too Heavy For Man To Bear, Something He Tries To Escape From?..is There Not Also, Perhaps, Besides An Innate Desire For Freedom, An Instinctive Wish For Submission?

-Erich Fromm

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Can Freedom Become A

Erich Fromm

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Can Freedom Become A Burden, Too Heavy For Man To Bear, Something He Tries To Escape From?..is There Not Also, Perhaps, Besides An Innate Desire For Freedom, An Instinctive Wish For Submission?

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Freedom Is The Fundamental Condition For Any Growth.

The Main Condition For The Achievement Of Love Is The Overcoming Of One's Narcissism. The Narcissistic Orientation Is One In Which One Experiences As Real Only That Which Exists Within Oneself, While The Phenomena In The Outside World Have No Reality In Themselves, But Are Experienced Only From The Viewpoint Of Their Being Useful Or Dangerous To One. The Opposite Pole To Narcissism Is Objectivity; It Is The Faculty To See Other People And Things As They Are, Objectively, And To Be Able To Separate This Objective Picture From A Picture Which Is Formed By One's Desires And Fears.

Optimism Is An Alienated Form Of Faith, Pessimism An Alienated Form Of Despair. If One Truly Responds To Man And His Future, Ie , Concernedly And "responsibly." One Can Respond Only By Faith Or By Despair. Rational Faith As Well As Rational Despair Are Based On The Most Thorough, Critical Knowledge Of All The Factors That Are Relevant For The Survival Of Man.

If You Want A Big Brother, You Get All That Comes With It.

The Essential Difference Between The Unhappy, Neurotic Type Person And Him Of Great Joy Is The Difference Between Get And Give.

It Is Notorious That No War Between Countries Elicits As Much Hate And Cruelty As Civil War, In Which There Is No Lack Of Acquaintance Between The Two Warring Sides.

In Times Of Change, Learners Inherit The Earth

Times Have Changed

What Is For Me Socialism Is Exactly The Opposite Of A Bureaucratically-managed Culture.

Just As Love For One Individual Which Excludes The Love For Others Is Not Love, Love For One's Country Which Is Not Part Of One's Love For Humanity Is Not Love, But Idolatrous Worship.

In The Act Of Giving Lies The Expression Of My Aliveness.

The State Of Sleep Is A State Of Freedom In Which Man Is Not Occupied With The Manipulation Of The Outside World.

I Believe Indeed That To Rescue The Humanist Tradition Of The Last Decades Is Of The Utmost Importance, And That Victor Serge Is One Of The Outstanding Personalities Representing The Socialist Aspect Of Humanism.

The Capacity To Be Puzzled Is The Premise Of All Creation, Be It In Art Or In Science.

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.

I Believe That Love Is The Main Key To Open The Doors To The "growth" Of Man. Love And Union With Someone Or Something Outside Of Oneself, Union That Allows One To Put Oneself Into Relationship With Others, To Feel One With Others, Without Limiting The Sense Of Integrity And Independence. Love Is A Productive Orientation For Which It Is Essential That There Be Present At The Same Time: Concern, Responsibility, And Respect For And Knowledge Of The Object Of The Union.

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.

We Substitute, Or We Rather Hide, This Fear Of Real Intimacy By A Superficial Kind Of Friendliness, Which Is Quite Nice, But Nevertheless, Very Shallow.

...in Spite Of The Deep-seated Craving For Love, Almost Everything Else Is Considered To Be More Important Than Love: Success, Prestige, Money, Power-almost All Our Energy Is Used For The Learning Of How To Achieve These Aims, And Almost None To Learn The Art Of Loving. Could It Be That Only Those Things Are Considered Worthy Of Being Learned With Which One Can Earn Money Or Prestige, And That Love, Which "only" Profits The Soul, But Is Profitless In The Modern Sense, Is A Luxury We Have No Right To Spend Energy On?

Man's Biological Weakness Is The Condition Of Human Culture.

Modern Man Is Alienated From Himself, From His Fellow Men, And From Nature. He Has Been Transformed Into A Commodity, Experiences His Life Forces As An Investment Which Must Bring Him The Maximum Profit Obtainable Under Existing Market Conditions.

The Narcissistic, The Domineering, The Possessive Woman Can Succeed In Being A "loving" Mother As Long As The Child Is Small. Only The Really Loving Woman, The Woman Who Is Happier In Giving Than In Taking, Who Is Firmly Rooted In Her Own Existence, Can Be A Loving Mother When The Child Is In The Process Of Separation.

We Are Terribly Imaginative, As Far As Technique In Science Is Concerned. As Far As Changes In Social Arrangements Are Concerned, We Lack Utterly In Imagination.

The Pleasure In Complete Domination Over Another Person (or Other Animate Creature) Is The Very Essence Of The Sadistic Drive. Another Way Of Formulating The Same Thought Is To Say That The Aim Of Sadism Is To Transform Man Into A Thing, Something Animate Into Something Inanimate, Since By Complete And Absolute Control The Living Loses One Essential Quality Of Life - Freedom.

A Dream Is A Microscope Through Which We Look At The Hidden Occurrences In Our Soul.

It Is Essential... That Discipline Should Not Be Practised Like A Rule Imposed On Oneself From The Outside, But That It Becomes An Expression Of One's Own Will; That It Is Felt As Pleasant, And That One Slowly Accustoms Oneself To A Kind Of Behaviour Which One Would Eventually Miss, If One Stopped Practising It.

Ger-mans Love The Ambiguous Word, Verbal Assonances As Ends In Themselves,vague Concepts. Anglosaxons Are More Clear.

I Am Convinced That Boredom Is One Of The Greatest Tortures. If I Were To Imagine Hell, It Would Be The Place Where You Were Continually Bored.

It Is A Tragedy That Most Of Us Die Before We Have Begun To Live.

To Die Is Poignantly Bitter, But The Idea Of Having To Die Without Having Lived Is Unbearable.

I Have A Tremendous Faith In The Possibilities Of Man, Which Have Shown In His Past, And I Believe If We Avoid War, We Shall Be Able To Revive Our Real Vision Of Life, But That We Must See It, And Therefore, That We Must Be Critical To Where We Are.

You Have To Stop To Change Direction.

Mother's Love Is Peace. It Need Not Be Acquired, It Need Not Be Deserved.

There Is Only One Reality: The Act Of Feeling Ourselves In The Process Of Making Choices.

I Believe That If An Individual Is Not On The Path To Transcending His Society And Seeing In What Way It Furthers Or Impedes The Development Of Human Potential, He Cannot Enter Into Intimate Contact With His Humanity.

Exploitation And Manipulation Produce Boredom And Triviality; They Cripple Man, And All Factors That Make Man Into A Psychic Cripple Turn Him Also Into A Sadist Or A Destroyer.

The Same Polarity Of The Male And Female Principle Exists In Nature; Not Only, As Is Obvious In Animals And Plants, But In The Polarity Of The Two Fundamental Functions, That Of Receiving And Penetrating. It Is The Polarity Of Earth And Rain, Of The River And The Ocean, Of Night And Day, Of Darkness And Light, Of Matter And Spirit.

It Is True That One Has To Think First And Then To Act - But It's Also True That If One Has No Possibility Of Acting, One's Thinking Kind Of Becomes Empty And Stupid.

Conditions For Creativity Are To Be Puzzled; To Concentrate; To Accept Conflict And Tension; To Be Born Everyday; To Feel A Sense Of Self.

Love Means To Commit Oneself Without Guarantee, To Give Oneself Completely In The Hope That Our Love Will Produce Love In The Loved Person. Love Is An Act Of Faith, And Whoever Is Of Little Faith Is Also Of Little Love.

We Have Faith In The Potentialities Of Others, Of Ourselves, And Of Mankind Because, And Only To The Degree To Which, We Have Experienced The Growth Of Our Own Potentialities, The Reality Of Growth In Ourselves, The Strength Of Our Own Power Of Reason And Love.

Infantile Love Follows The Principle: "i Love Because I Am Loved." Mature Love Follows The Principle: "i Am Loved Because I Love." Immature Love Says: "i Love You Because I Need You." Mature Love Says: "i Need You Because I Love You.

Mother Is The Home We Come From. She Is Nature, Soil, Ocean.

To Be Concentrated Means To Live Fully In The Present.

Education Is Helping The Child Realise His Potentialities.

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.

Alienation As We Find It In Modern Society Is Almost Total… Man Has Created A World Of Man-made Things As It Never Existed Before. He Has Constructed A Complicated Social Machine To Administer The Technical Machine He Built. The More Powerful And Gigantic The Forces Are Which He Unleashes, The More Powerless He Feels Himself As A Human Being. He Is Owned By His Creations, And Has Lost Ownership Of Himself.

[sigmund ] Freud Assumes That Every Dream Represents The Satisfaction Of Adesire And In The Last Analysis, Of A Sexual Desire That Has Its Roots In Infancy.

I Would Say That Love Today Is A Relatively Rare Phenomenon, That We Have A Great Deal Of Sentimentality; We Have A Great Deal Of Illusion About Love, Namely As A... As Something One Falls In.

The More The Drive Toward Life Is Thwarted, The Stronger Is The Drive Toward Destruction; The More Life Is Realized, The Less Is The Strength Of Destructiveness. Destructiveness Is The Outcome Of Unlived Life.

The Revolutionary And Critical Thinker Is In A Certain Way Always Outside Of His Society While Of Course He Is At The Same Time Also In It.

If We Begin To Say, "well, Maybe We Can Cope Better With The Russians If We Also Transform Ourselves Into A Managed Society, If We, As Somebody Put It The Other Day, Train Our Soldiers To Be Like The Turks, Who Have Fought So Bravely In Korea, If We Are Willing To Change Our Whole Way Of Life For The Sake Of So-called "survival," Then I Think We Do Exactly That Which Threatens Our Survival.

It Takes A Moment To Tell Someone You Love Them, But It Takes A Lifetime To Prove It.

Optimism Is An Alienated Form Of Faith, Pessimism An Alienated Form Of Despair.

Man, The More He Gains Freedom In The Sense Of Emerging From The Original Oneness With Man And Nature And The More He Becomes An "individual," Has No Choice But To Unite Himself With The World In The Spontaneity Of Love And Productive Work Or Else To Seek A Kind Of Security By Such Ties With The World As Destroy His Freedom And The Integrity Of His Individual Self.

The Member Of A Primitive Clan Might Express His Identity In The Formula "i Am We"; He Cannot Yet Conceive Of Himself As An "individual," Existing Apart From His Group.

The Only Way Of Full Knowledge Lies In The Act Of Love; This Act Transcends Thought, It Transcends Words. It Is The Daring Plunge Into The Experience Of Union. To Love Somebody Is Not Just A Strong Feeling-it Is A Decision, It Is A Judgment, It Is A Promise.

Understanding A Person Does Not Mean Condoning; It Only Means That One Does Not Accuse Him As If One Were God Or A Judge Placed Above Him.

Love Is A Power Which Produces Love.

Care And Responsibility Are Constituent Elements Of Love, But Without Respect For And Knowledge Of The Beloved Person, Love Deteriorates Into Domination And Possessiveness.

Chronic Boredom Compensated Or Uncompensated Constitutes One Of The Major Psychopathological Phenomena In Contemporary Technotronic Society, Although It Is Only Recently That It Has Found Some Recognition.

The Pace Of Science Forces The Pace Of Technique. Theoretical Physics Forces Atomic Energy On Us; The Successful Production Of The Fission Bomb Forces Upon Us The Manufacture Of The Hydrogen Bomb. We Do Not Choose Our Problems, We Do Not Choose Our Products; We Are Pushed, We Are Forced -- By What? By A System Which Has No Purpose And Goal Transcending It, And Which Makes Man Its Appendix.

You Have To Stop In Order To Change Direction.

For The Most Part, Biophiliacs,lovers Of Life, Are Found Among Simple People, Without Pretensions.

Love Isn't Something Natural. Rather It Requires Discipline, Concentration, Patience, Faith, And The Overcoming Of Narcissism. It Isn't A Feeling, It Is A Practice.

Is Love An Art? Then It Requires Knowledge And Effort.

I Would Say, Compared With The 19th Century, Compared With Most Previous History, This Is As Good Or Better A Society Than Any Which Man Has Ever Made. But That Doesn't Mean It Is Such A Good One.

We Have, In The Same Way, Relegated Our Own Responsibility In What Happens To Our Country To The Specialists, Who Are Supposed To Take Care Of It, And The Individual Citizen Does Not Feel That He Can Judge, And Even That He Should Judge, And Take Any Responsibility. I Think There Are Quite A Number Of Recent Developments Which Show That.

The Most Beautiful As Well As The Most Ugly Inclinations Of Man Are Not Part Of A Fixed Biologically Given Human Nature, But Result From The Social Process Which Creates Man.

People Think That To Love Is Simple, But That To Find The Right Object To Love - Or To Be Loved By - Is Difficult.

Love Of Others And Love Of Ourselves Are Not Alternatives. On The Contrary, An Attitude Of Love Towards Themselves Will Be Found In All Those Who Are Capable Of Loving Others.

In The Development Of Both Capitalism And Communism, As We Visualize Them In The Next Fifty Or A Hundred Years, The Processes That Encourage Human Alienation Will Continue.

Man Can Only Know The Nagation, Never The Position Of Ultimate Reality.

Boredom Is Nothing But The Experience Of A Paralysis Of Our Productive Powers And The Sense Of Unaliveness. Among The Evils Of Life, There Are Few Which Are As Painful As Boredom, And Consequently Every Attempt Is Made To Avoid It.

Happiness Is A Very Proud Word Of Our Whole Cultural Heritage.

Love Is The Only Sane And Satisfactory Answer To The Problem Of Human Existence.

We May Know Ourselves, And Yet Even With All The Efforts We Make, We Do Not Know Ourselves. We Know Our Fellowman, And Yet We Do Not Know Him, Because We Are Not A Thing, And Our Fellowman Is Not A Thing. The Further We Reach Into The Depths Of Our Being, On Someone Else's Being, The More The Goal Of Knowledge Eludes Us.

People Have Committed Suicide Because Of Their Failure To Realize The Passions For Love , Power , Fame , Revenge . Cases Of Suicide Because Of A Lack Of Sexual Satisfaction Are Virtually Nonexistent.

The Two Most Far-reaching Critical Theories At The Beginning Of The Latest Phase Of Industrial Society Were Those Of Marx And Freud. Marx Showed The Moving Powers And The Conflicts In The Social-historical Process. Freud Aimed At The Critical Uncovering Of The Inner Conflicts. Both Worked For The Liberation Of Man, Even Though Marx's Concept Was More Comprehensive And Less Time-bound Than Freud's.

Today The Function Of Psychiatry, Psychology And Psychoanalysis Threatens To Become The Tool In The Manipulation Of Man.

If An Individual Is Able To Love Productively, He Loves Himself, Too; If He Can Love Only Others, He Cannot Love At All.

The Most Important Things We Talk About On Sundays Are Things To Which We Pay Very Little Attention.

Man Can Be Conditioned To Behave In Almost Every Desired Way; But Only "almost.

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.

There Is Nothing Inhuman, Evil, Or Irrational Which Does Not Give Some Comfort, Provided It Is Shared By A Group.

We Talk About Equality, About Happiness, About Freedom - And About The Spiritual Values Of Religion, And About God - And In Our Daily Life, We Act On Principles Which Are Different, And Partly Contradictory.

Independent Of Others And In Concert With Others, Your Main Task In Life Is To Do What You Can Best Do And Become What You Can Potentially Be.

For [karl] Marx It Is Socialist Society Which Realizes "concretely" The Religious Principles Of Equality, Brotherly Love, And Freedom.

If One Admits That The Influence Of The Outside World Is Essentially Beneficial, The Lack Of Such Influence During Sleep Would Tend To Diminish The Value Of Our Dream Activity So As To Render It Inferior To The Mental Activity That Takes Place When We Are Awake, When We Are Exposed To These Beneficial Influences Of Surrounding Reality. But How Can One Say That The Influence Of Reality Is Exclusively Beneficial. Could It Not Also Be Damaging, And Could Its Absence Not Give Access To Qualities Superior To Those That We Have When Awake?

Men Are Born Equal But They Are Also Born Different.

In Fifty Years Activity As An Analyst I Have Witnessed Again And Again That A Dreamer After Having Met A Personage Regarded By All As Influential And Good,saw Him Again In A Dream With A Different Face.

Different Faces

I Would Consider A Socialism A Mixture Of The Minimum Of Centralization Necessary For A Modern Industrial State, And A Maximum Of Decentralization.

If I Am What I Have And If I Lose What I Have Who Then Am I?

Equality Today Means ‘sameness’, Rather Than ‘oneness’.

Freedom Does Not Mean License.

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.

On The Whole, Our Modern Ritual Is Impoverished And Does Not Fulfill Man's Need For Collective Art And Ritual.

Freedom Is Not A Constant Attribute Which We Either "have" Or "have Not." In Fact, There Is No Such Thing As "freedom" Except As A Word And An Abstract Concept. There Is Only One Reality: The Act Of Freeing Ourselves In The Process Of Making Choices. In This Process The Degree Of Our Capacity To Make Choices Varies With Each Act, With Our Practice Of Life.

We Are Confronted With The Possibility Of A War Of Such Destruction That The Whole Existence Of Our Nation And Of The Whole World Is At Stake. And Yet, People Know It - People Read It In The Newspapers, People Read That At The First Attack, A Hundred Million Americans Might Be Killed. And Yet, They Talk About It As If They Were Talking About Something Being Wrong With The Carburetor Of Their Car, Perhaps.

I Have Learnt To Appreciate The Clarity Of English Language.

Education Is Identical With Helping The Child Realize His Potentialities. The Opposite Of Education Is Manipulation, Which Is Based On The Absence Of Faith In The Growth Of Potentialities And The Connection That A Child Will Be Right Only If The Adults Put Into Him What Is Desirable And Suppress What Seems To Be Undesirable.

Today It Is Not Alive. What, Then, Is This Experience Of Humanism? With The Above Survey I Have Tried To Show You That The Experience Of Humanism Is That — As Terence Expressed It — “nothing Human Is Alien To Me”; That Nothing Which Exists In Any Human Being Does Not Exist In Myself. I Am The Criminal And I Am The Saint. I Am The Child And I Am The Adult. I Am The Man Who Lived A Hundred Thousand Years Ago And I Am The Man Who, Provided We Don't Destroy The Human Race, Will Live Hundred Thousand Years From Now.

I Think What Democracy Means Today, In Reality, Is To A Large Extent, Manipulated Consent - Not Forced Consent, Manipulated Consent - And Manipulated More And More With The Help Of Madison Avenue.

I Think If You Ask What People Really Mean By Happiness Today, It Is The Experience Of Unlimited Consumption - The Kind Of Thing Mr. Huxley Described In "brave New World."

Brave New World

I Think The Russians Might Do Away With The Terror In Twenty Or Thirty Or Years, When They Are Richer, And When They Don't Need These Repressive Methods So Much.

A Person Who Has Not Been Completely Alienated, Who Has Remained Sensitive And Able To Feel, Who Has Not Lost The Sense Of Dignity, Who Is Not Yet 'for Sale', Who Can Still Suffer Over The Suffering Of Others, Who Has Not Acquired Fully The Having Mode Of Existence - Briefly, A Person Who Has Remained A Person And Not Become A Thing - Cannot Help Feeling Lonely, Powerless, Isolated In Present-day Society.

Suffering Of Others

The Manual Worker Does Not Have To Sell His Personality. He Doesn't Have To Sell His Smile.

The Sick Individual Finds Himself At Home With All Other Similarly Sick Individuals. The Whole Culture Is Geared To This Kind Of Pathology.

[sigmund Freud] Makes The Interpretation Of Dreams Extremely Simple: It Deals In Substance With Discovering What Unconscious Desires, Distorted But Recognizable, Are Hid-den In The Dream. Instead, For Me The Dream Is A Mixture Of Thoughts And Sensations That Man Has When He Is Asleep, A Mental State Relatively Protected From The Constant Noise That Society Makes.

In Fact, There Are Very Important Writings Of Marx Which Are Not Even Translated Into English.

Modern Man Lives Under The Illusion That He Knows What He Wants, While He Actually Wants What He Is Supposed To Want.

Exclusive Love Is A Contradiction In Itself.

I Believe That The Fundamental Alternative For Man Is The Choice Between "life" And "death"; Between Creativity And Destructive Violence; Between Reality And Illusions; Between Objectivity And Intolerance; Between Brotherhood-independence And Dominance-submission.

Man Is The Only Animal That Can Be Bored.

When Blended With Sexuality, The Death Instinct Is Transformed Into More Harmless Impulses Expressed In Sadism Or Masochism.

In The Dominant Western Religious System, The Love Of God Is Essentially The Same As The Belief In God, In God’s Existence, God’s Justice, God’s Love. The Love Of God Is Essentially A Thought Experience. In The Eastern Religions And In Mysticism, The Love Of God Is An Intense Feeling Experience Of Oneness, Inseparably Linked With The Expression Of This Love In Every Act Of Living.

We Live In A World Of Things, And Our Only Connection With Them Is That We Know How To Manipulate Or To Consume Them.

When People Can't Handle God Any More, They Turn To Religion.

Like The Effect Of Advertising Upon The Customer, The Methods Of Political Propaganda Tend To Increase The Feeling Of Insignificance Of The Individual Voter.

Love Is An Active Power In Man; A Power Which Breaks Through The Walls Which Separate Man From His Fellow Men, Which Unite Him With Others; Love Makes Him Overcome The Sense Of Isolation And Separateness, Yet It Permits Him To Be Himself, To Retain His Integrity.

Human History Began With An Act Of Disobedience And It Is Not Unlikely That It Will Be Terminated By An Act Of Obedience.

Envy, Jealousy, Ambition, Any Kind Of Greed Are Passions; Love Is An Action, The Practice Of Human Power, Which Can Be Practiced Only In Freedom And Never As A Result Of Compulsion. Love Is An Activity, Not A Passive Affect; It Is A "standing In," Not A "falling For." In The Most General Way, The Active Character Of Love Can Be Described By Stating That Love Is Primarily Giving, Not Receiving.

There Is Only One Meaning Of Life: The Act Of Living Itself.

Meaning Of Life

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.

The Danger Of The Past Was That Men Became Slaves. The Danger Of The Future Is That Man May Become Robots.

There Is Nothing Of Which We Are More Ashamed Than Of Not Being Ourselves. And There Is Nothing Which Brings Us Greater Joy And Happiness Than To Think, Feel, And Say What Is Ours.

I Would Say Democracy Once Meant An Organizational Society And A State, In Which The Individual Citizen Is - Feels - Responsible, And Acts Responsibly, And Participates In Decision-making.

Knowing Means To Penetrate Through The Surface, In Order To Arrive At The Roots, And Hence The Causes; Knowing Means To "see" Reality In Its Nakedness. Knowing Does Not Mean To Be In The Possession Of The Truth; It Means To Penetrate The Surface And To Strive Critically And Actively In Order To Approach Truth Ever More Closely.

The Most Important Influence On A Child Is The Character Of Its Parents, Rather Than This Or That Single Event.

I Think [karl] Marx, Pope John Xxiii Or Rosa Luxemburg [had Achieved The Mode Of Existence].but It Would Be Useless To Look At A List Of Illustrious Names.

What Is It That Distinguishes Man From Animals? It Is Not His Upright Posture.

Whether...a Change From The Supremacy Of Natural Science To A New Social Science Will Take Place...depends On One Factor: How Many Brilliant, Learned, Disciplined, And Caring Men And Women Are Attracted By The New Challenge.

Man's Main Task In Life Is To Give Birth To Himself.

If The Handbag Could Think, It Would Have A Terrific Inferiority Feeling, Because, Not Having Been Bought, It Would Feel Useless.

Love Is Not Easy. All Great Religions Postulate Love As One Of The Greatest Accomplishments. If It Were That Easy, Or As Easy As Most People Think, Certainly, The Great Religious Leaders Would Have Been Rather Naive.

Integrity Simply Means A Willingness Not To Violate One's Identity, In The Many Ways In Which Such Violation Is Possible.

The Mother-child Relationship Is Paradoxical And, In A Sense, Tragic. It Requires The Most Intense Love On The Mother's Side, Yet This Very Love Must Help The Child Grow Away From The Mother, And To Become Fully Independent.

Technical Utopias-flying, For Example-have Been Achieved By The New Science Of Nature.the Human Utopia...a United New Humankind Living In Solidarity And Peace, Free From Economic Determination And From War And Class Struggle-can Be Achieved, Provided We Spend The Same Energy, Intelligence, And Enthusiasm On The Realization Of The Human Utopia As We Have Spent On The Realization Of Our Technical Utopias.

The Only Concern Which I Have Today Is That We Have A Policy, A Foreign Policy, Which Enables Us To Avoid A Catastrophe; Which, If One Understands It Properly, Is Indescribable.

The Whole Life Of The Individual Is Nothing But The Process Of Giving Birth To Himself; Indeed, We Should Be Fully Born When We Die.

That Millions Of People Share The Same Forms Of Mental Pathology Does Not Make These People Sane.

Paradoxically, The Ability To Be Alone Is The Condition For The Ability To Love.

Ability To Love

Only When Man Succeeds In Developing His Reason And Love Further Than He Has Done So Far, Only When He Can Build A World Based On Human Solidarity And Justice, Only When He Can Feel Rooted In The Experience Of Universal Brotherliness, Will He Have Tr

Most People See The Problem Of Love Primarily As That Of Being Loved, Rather Than That Of Loving, Of One's Capacity To Love. Hence The Problem To Them Is How To Be Loved, How To Be Lovable.

Capacity To Love

The Average American Has Separated His Private Life From His Existence As A Member Of His Society, And Leaves That To The Specialists In The Government To Take Care Of.

I Only Wish To Be The Fountain Of Love From Which You Drink, Every Drop Promising Eternal Passion.

Selfish Persons Are Incapable Of Loving Others, But They Are Not Capable Of Loving Themselves Either.

People Do Not See That The Main Question Is Not : "am I Loved?" Which Is To A Large Extent The Question : "am I Approved Of? Am I Protected? Am I Admired?" The Main Question Is: "can I Love?

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.

In The 19th Century Inhumanity Meant Cruelty; In The 20th Century It Means Schizoid Self-alienation.

Today, We Talk A Lot About Equality, But I Think What Most People Mean By It Is Sameness - That Everybody Is The Same - And They Are Afraid If They Are Not The Same, They Are Not Equal.

When An Individual Is Awake, Almost All He Does And Says Is Inspired By The Model Of Behavior That The Society Imposes,even Without His Being Aware Of It.

I Think Our Danger Is That We Talk One Thing, And We Feel And Act Another Thing.

Giving Is More Joyous Than Receiving, Not Because It Is A Deprivation, But Because In The Act Of Giving Lies The Expression Of My Aliveness.

Hate Is A Product Of The Unfulfilled Life.

Creativity Is The Ability To See And To Respond.

Love Is An Act Of Faith.

If You Take A Salesman, Who Sells A Useless Commodity, He Feels Like A Fraud.

Giving Is The Highest Expression Of Potency. In The Very Act Of Giving, I Experience My Strength, My Wealth, My Power. This Experience Of Heightened Vitality And Potency Fills Me With Joy. I Experience Myself As Overflowing, Spending, Alive, Hence As Joyous.

The Individual Citizen Has Very Little Possibility Of Having Any Influence - Of Making His Opinion Felt In The Decision-making.

That Is Not Quite Enough To Make One Happy, If One Spends Eight Hours A Day In Something Which In Itself Has No Meaning And Interest, Except That One Gains Money From It.

The Average American Never Loses His Sleep About Affairs Which Relate To His Society And To Our Whole Country.

If I Perceive In Another Person Mainly The Surface, I Perceive Mainly The Differences,that Which Separates Us. If I Penetrate To The Core, I Perceive Our Identity, The Fact Of Our Brotherhood. This Relatedness From Center To Center - Instead Of That From Periphery To Periphery - Is 'central Relatedness'.

The History Of Man Is A Graveyard Of Great Cultures That Came To Catastrophic Ends Because Of Their Incapacity For Planned, Rational, Voluntary Reaction To Challenge.

Respect Is Not Fear And Awe; It...[is]the Ability To See A Person As He Is, To Be Aware Of His Unique Individuality. Respect, Thus, Implies The Absence Of Exploitation. I Want The Loved Person To Grow And Unfold For His Own Sake, And In His Own Ways, And Not For The Purpose Of Serving Me.

Happiness Does Not Exclude Sadness - If A Person Responds To Life, He's Sometimes Happy And Sometimes Sad. What Matters Is He Responds.

It Seems That Great Minds A Hundred Years Ago Saw What Would Happen Today Or Tomorrow, While We To Whom It Is Happening Blind Ourselves In Order Not To Be Disturbed In Our Daily Routine.

While We Teach Knowledge, We Are Losing That Teaching Which Is The Most Important One For Human Development: The Teaching Which Can Only Be Given By The Simple Presence Of A Mature, Loving Person.

Religion And Nationalism, As Well As Any Custom And Any Belief However Absurd And Degrading, If It Only Connects The Individual With Others, Are Refuges From What Man Most Dreads: Isolation.

I Shall Become A Master In This Art Only After A Great Deal Of Practice.

Society Must Be Organized In Such A Way That Mans Social, Loving Nature Is Not Separated From His Social Existence, But Becomes One With It.

Our Contemporary Western Society, In Spite Of Its Material, Intellectual And Political Progress, Is Increasingly Less Conducive To Mental Health, And Tends To Undermine The Inner Security, Happiness, Reason And The Capacity For Love In The Individual; It Tends To Turn Him Into An Automaton Who Pays For His Human Failure With Increasing Mental Sickness, And With Despair Hidden Under A Frantic Drive For Work And So Called Pleasure.

I See Socialism In The Direction, Of Management, Of Enterprise, By All Who Work In The Enterprise.

Man's Main Task In Life Is To Give Birth To Himself, To Become What He Potentially Is. The Most Important Product Of His Effort Is His Own Personality.

The Fact Is That The Culture Does Not Have Only Positive Effects On Our Intellectual And Moral Functions But Also Negative Effects.

All Men Are In Need Of Help And Depend On One Another. Human Solidarity Is The Necessary Condition For The Unfolding Of Any One Individual.

If It Is A Virtue To Love My Neighbor As A Human Being, It Must Be A Virtue - And Not A Vice - To Love Myself, Since I Am A Human Being Too.

Man Is The Only Animal Who Does Not Feel At Home In Nature, Who Can Feel Evicted From Paradise, The Only Animal For Whom His Own Existence Is A Problem That He Has To Solve And From Which He Cannot Escape. He Cannot Go Back To The Prehuman State Of Harmony With Nature, And He Does Not Know Where He Will Arrive If He Goes Forward. Man's Existential Contradiction Results In A State Of Constant Disequilibrium. This Disequilibrium Distinguishes Him From The Animal, Which Lives, As It Were, In Harmony With Nature.

To Love Somebody Is Not Just A Strong Feeling - It Is A Decision, It Is A Judgment, It Is A Promise.

Love Is Active Penetration Of The Other Person, In Which My Desire To Know Is Stilled By Union. In The Act Of Fusion I Know You, I Know Myself, I Know Everybody - And I "know" Nothing.

The Need For The Creation Of Collective Art And Ritual On A Nonclerical Basis Is At Least As Important As Literacy And Higher Education.

There Are Many Who Feel Consciously Hopeful And Unconsciously Hopeless, And There Are Few For Whom It Is The Other Way Around.

I Believe That The Experience Of Love Is The Most Human And Humanizing Act That It Is Given To Man To Enjoy And That It, Like Reason, Makes No Sense If Conceived In A Partial Way.

In His Condemnation [karl] Marx Referred To Institutionalized Religion,that Has Precisely The Function Of Anesthetizing Men Till They Do Not Notice The In- Justice Of Which They Are The Perpetrators And The Victims.

If The Russians Claim They Are Socialist, This Is Just, I Would Say, A Lie. They Have No Socialism At All. They Have What I Would Call A State Capitalism.

To Respect A Person Is Not Possible Without Knowing Him; Care And Responsibility Would Be Blind If They Were Not Guided By Knowledge.

The Root Of The Word Education Is E-ducere, Literally, To Lead Forth, Or To Bring Out Something Which Is Potentially Present.

But Not Only Medicine, Engineering, And Painting Are Arts; Living Itself Is An Art In Fact, The Most Important And At The Same Time The Most Difficult And Complex Art To Be Practiced By Man.

To Live Is To Be Born Every Minute. Death Occurs When Birth Stops.

Knowing Who You Are

The Aim Of Life Is To Be Fully Born, Though Its Tragedy Is That Most Of Us Die Before We Are Thus Born.

The Task We Must Set For Ourselves Is Not To Feel Secure, But To Be Able To Tolerate Insecurity.

Only The Person Who Has Faith In Himself Is Able To Be Faithful To Others.

Free Man Is By Necessity Insecure, Thinking Man By Necessity Uncertain.

To Take The Difficulties, Setbacks And Sorrows Of Life As A Challenge To Overcome Makes Us Stronger, Rather Than Unjust Punishment Which Should Not Happen To Us, Requires Faith And Courage.

Can Freedom Become A Burden, Too Heavy For Man To Bear, Something He Tries To Escape From?..is There Not Also, Perhaps, Besides An Innate Desire For Freedom, An Instinctive Wish For Submission?

Human History Began As An Act Of Disobedience, And It Is Not Unlikely That It Will Be Terminated By An Act Of Obedience. At This Point In History The Capacity To Doubt, To Criticize And To Disobey May Be All That Stands Between A Future For Mankind And The End Of Civilization.

If You Do Not Smile, You Are Judged Lacking In A 'pleasing Personality' - And You Need To Have A Pleasing Personality If You Want To Sell Your Services, Whether As A Waitress, A Salesman, Or A Physician.

True Love Is Like A Pair Of Socks: You Gotta Have Two And They've Gotta Match.

Society, And The Family As Its Psycho Social Agent, Has To Solve A Difficult Problem: How To Break A Person's Will Without His Being Aware Of It? Yet By A Complicated Process Of Indoctrination, Rewards, Punishments, And Fitting Ideology, It Solves This Task By And Large So Well That Most People Believe They Are Following Their Own Will And Are Unaware That Their Will Itself Is Conditioned And Manipulated.

Reason Flows From The Blending Of Rational Thought And Feeling. If The Two Functions Are Torn Apart, Thinking Deteriorates Into Schizoid Intellectual Activity And Feeling Deteriorates Into Neurotic Life-damaging Passions.

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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Gamal Abdel Nasser

Clarice Lispector

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