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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.

-Erich Fromm

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Education Is Identical With

Erich Fromm

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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.

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Power On The One Side, Fear On The Other, Are Always The Buttresses On Which Irrational Authority Is Built.

Giving Is The Highest Expression Of Potency.

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.

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.

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.

Freedom Is The Fundamental Condition For Any Growth.

Love Is A Decision, It Is A Judgment, It Is A Promise. If Love Were Only A Feeling, There Would Be No Basis For The Promise To Love Each Other Forever. A Feeling Comes And It May Go. How Can I Judge That It Will Stay Forever, When My Act Does Not Involve Judgment And Decision.

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

There Is A Creative Pleasure, Which, For Instance, The Artisan In The Middle Ages, Or In A Country Like Mexico, Still Today Has - Namely The Pleasure Of Creating Something. You Find Quite A Few Skilled Workers Who Still Have That Pleasure: Maybe In A Steel Mill; Maybe A Worker Who Works With A Complicated Machine - He Has A Sense That He Is Creating Something.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Ability To Love

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.

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

To Love One Person Productively Means To Be Related To His Human Core, To Him As Representing Mankind. Love For One Individual, In So Far As It Is Divorced From Love For Man, Can Refer Only To The Superficial And To The Accidental; Of Necessity It Remains Shallow.

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.

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.

I Need You Because I Love You.

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.

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

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.

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.

If The Meaning Of Life Has Become Doubtful, If One's Relations To Others And To Oneself Do Not Offer Security, Then Fame Is One Means To Silence One's Doubts. It Has A Function To Be Compared With That Of The Egyptian Pyramids Or The Christian Faith In Immortality: It Elevates One's Individual Life From Its Limitations And Instability To The Plane Of Indestructability; If One's Name Is Known To One's Contemporaries And If One Can Hope That It Will Last For Centuries, Then One's Life Has Meaning And Significance By This Very Reflection Of It In The Judgments Of Others.

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.

Modern Man's Happiness Consists In The Thrill Of Looking At The Shop Windows, And In Buying All That He Can Afford To Buy, Either For Cash Or On Installments.

The Criterion Of Mental Health Is Not One Of Individual Adjustment To A Given Social Order, But A Universal One, Valid For All Men, Of Giving A Satisfactory Answer To The Problem Of Human Existence.

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.

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.

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.

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?

To Hope Means To Be Ready At Every Moment For That Which Is Not Yet Born, And Yet Not Become Desperate If There Is No Birth In Our Lifetime.

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

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.

I Believe That None Can "save" His Fellow Man By Making A Choice For Him. To Help Him, He Can Indicate The Possible Alternatives, With Sincerity And Love, Without Being Sentimental And Without Illusion.

The Mother's And Father's Attitudes Toward The Child Correspond To The Child's Own Needs.... Mother Has The Function Of Making Himsecure In Life, Father Has The Function Of Teaching Him, Guiding Him To Cope With Those Problems With Which The Particular Society The Child Has Been Born Into Confronts Him.

Productive Work, Love And Thought Are Possible Only If A Person Can Be, When Necessary, Quiet And Alone. To Be Able To Listen To Oneself Is The Necessary Condition For Relating Oneself To Others.

Productive Work

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.

Man Is The Only Animal For Whom His Own Existence Is A Problem Which He Has To Solve.

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

What Most People In Our Culture Mean By Being Lovable Is Essentially A Mixture Between Being Popular And Having Sex Appeal.

The Most Important Misunderstanding Seems To Me To Lie In A Confusion Between The Human Necessities Which I Consider Part Of Human Nature, And The Human Necessities As They Appear As Drives, Needs, Passions, Etc., In Any Given Historical Period.

Love Is The Only Way Of Knowledge, Which In The Act Of Union Answers My Quest. In The Act Of Loving, Of Giving Myself, In The Act Of Penetrating The Other Person, I Find Myself, I Discover Myself, I Discover Us Both, I Discover Man.

Modern Man, If He Dared To Be Articulate About His Concept Of Heaven, Would Describe A Vision Which Would Look Like The Biggest Department Store In The World, Showing New Things And Gadgets, And Himself Having Plenty Of Money With Which To Buy Them.

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.

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.

It Doesn't Matter Whether One Uses God Or Doesn't. What Matters Is Which Experience A Person Has.

I Think We Got Off The Track, As Many Societies Do, Who Follow Successfully One Aim, And Yet Are Not Capable Of Seeing At What Point The Pursuit Of This Aim Prevents Them From Following A More Total Aim. That Is To Say, They Get Into A Blind Alley.

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. One Can Judge Objectively To What Extent A Person Has Succeeded In His Task, To What Degree He Has Realized His Potentialities. If He Has Failed In His Task, One Can Recognize This Failure And Judge It For What It Is - A Moral Failure.

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.

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

Both Dreams And Myths Are Important Communications From Ourselves To Ourselves. If We Do Not Understand The Language In Which They Are Written, We Miss A Great Deal Of What We Know And Tell Ourselves In Those Hours When We Are Not Busy Manipulating The Outside World.

There Is No Word In Our Language Which Has Been So Much Misused And Prostituted As The Word Love. It Has Been Preached By Those Who Were Ready To Condone Every Cruelty If It Served Their Purpose; It Has Been Used As A Disguise Under Which To Force People Into Sacrificing Their Own Happiness, Into Submitting Their Whole Self To Those Who Profited From This Surrender. [...] It Has Been Made So Empty That For Many People Love May Mean No More Than That Two People Have Lived Together For Twenty Years Just Without Fighting More Often Than Once A Week.

I Understand By Socialism A Society In Which The Aim Of Production Is Not Profit, But The Use. In Which The Individual Citizen Participates Responsibly In His Work, And In The Whole Social Organization, And In Which He Is Not A Means Who Is Employed By Capital.

Both Dreams And Myths Are Important Communications From Ourselves To Ourselves.

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.

The Ordinary Man With Extraordinary Power Is The Chief Danger For Mankind - Not The Fiend Or The Sadist.

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.

A New Question Has Arisen In Modern Man's Mind, The Question, Namely, Whether Life Is Worth Living...no Sensible Answer Can Be Given To The Question...because The Question Does Not Make Any Sense.

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

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.

I Believe That One Can And Must Hope For A Sane Society That Furthers Man's Capacity To Love His Fellow Men, To Work And Create, To Develop His Reason And His Objectivity Of A Sense Of Himself That Is Based On The Experience Of His Productive Energy. I Believe That One Can And Must Hope For The Collective Regaining Of A Mental Health That Is Characterized By The Capacity To Love And To Create.

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.

Psychoanalysis Is Essentially A Theory Of Unconscious Strivings, Of Resistance, Of Falsification Of Reality According To One's Subjective Needs And Expectations.

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.

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

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.

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

Love Is Hot A Higher Power Which Descends Upon Mn Nor A Duty Which Is Imposed Upon Him; It Is His Own Power By Which He Relates Himself To The World And Makes It Truly His.

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

The Human Passions Transform Man From A Mere Thing Into A Hero, Into A Being That In Spite Of Tremendous Handicaps Tries To Make Sense Of Life.

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

The Third Error Leading To The Assumption That There Is Nothing To Be Learned About Love Lies In The Confusion Between The Initial Experience Of ‘falling’ In Love, And The Permanent State Of Being In Love, Or As We Might Better Say, Of ‘standing’ In Love.

Falling In Love

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

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

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.

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.

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

We Are A Society Of Notoriously Unhappy People: Lonely, Anxious, Depressed, Destructive, Dependent - People Who Are Glad When We Have Killed The Time We Are Trying So Hard To Save.

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

Even The Most Sadistic And Destructive Man Is Human, As Human As The Saint.

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.

This Marxian Sentence, Repeated To The Point Of Boredom, Is Misinterpreted. In Reality [karl] Marx Was A "religious" Man.

Man Always Dies Before He Is Fully Born.

The Average American Is Not Concerned With His Society. He Talks About It, But You Know If One Speaks Of Being Concerned, I Mean Something About Which One Loses One's Sleep, Sometimes.

I Believe That The Unity Of Man As Opposed To Other Living Things Derives From The Fact That Man Is The Conscious Life Of Himself. Man Is Conscious Of Himself, Of His Future, Which Is Death, Of His Smallness, Of His Impotence; He Is Aware Of Others As Others; Man Is In Nature, Subject To Its Laws Even If He Transcends It With His Thought.

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 Abstract Society As Such, Whose Actions, Thoughts, And Feelings Are The Object Of Sociological Research.

Man Is Born As A Freak Of Nature, Being Within Nature And Yet Transcending It. He Has To Find Principles Of Action And Decision-making Which Replace The Principles Of Instincts.

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

Love Is An Act Of Faith.

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

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 Sadistic Person Is As Dependent On The Submissive Person As The Latter Is On The Former; Neither Can Live Without The Other. The Difference Is Only That The Sadistic Person Commands, Exploits, Hurts, Humiliates, And That The Masochistic Person Is Commanded, Exploited, Hurt, Humiliated. This Is A Considerable Difference In A Realistic Sense; In A Deeper Emotional Sense, The Difference Is Not So Great As That Which They Both Have In Common: Fusion Without Integrity .

We Can Express Ideas Without Being Afraid Of Being Killed Or Imprisoned.

Actually, If You Take The Average American, And Studies Have Shown That, He Is Really Concerned Only With Private Affairs; That Is To Say, With His Health, His Money And Family Affairs.

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

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.

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.

Beyond The Element Of Giving, The Active Characteristic Of Love Becomes Evident In The Fact That It Always Implies Certain Basic Elements, Common To All Forms Of Love. These Are Care, Responsability, Respect And Knowledge

The Confusion Between Temperament And Character Has Had Serious Consequences For Ethical Theory. Preferences With Regard To Differences In Temperament Are Mere Matters Of Subjective Taste. But Differences In Character Are Ethically Of The Most Fundamental Importance.

As We Ascend The Social Ladder, Viciousness Wears A Thicker Mask.

Why Should Society Feel Responsible Only For The Education Of Children, And Not For The Education Of All Adults Of Every Age?

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

Meaning Of Life

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.

Freedom Does Not Mean License.

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.

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.

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

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.

Intellectuals Are Hindered On The Way To Being, By Their Narcissism.

Neurosis Can Be Understood Best As The Battle Between Tendencies Within An Individual; Deep Character Analysis Leads, If Successful, To The Progressive Solution.

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 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.

We Must Make A Decision Of Values.

Having Lost Religious Faith And The Humanistic Values Bound Up With It, He [man] Concentrated On Technical And Material Values And Lost The Capacity For Deep Emotional Experiences, For The Joy And Sadness That Accompany Them.

Just As Modern Mass Production Requires The Standardization Of Commodities, So The Social Process Requires Standardization Of Man, And This Standardization Is Called Equality.

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

I Would Say Love Is Something Everybody Talks About, And The Need For Love Is One Of The Most Basic Needs Of Man, Namely The Experience Of Union With Another Being - Of Becoming One With Another Being.

Fairness Means Not To Use Fraud And Trickery In The Exchange Of Commodities And Services And The Exchange Of Feelings.

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

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.

Man May Be Defined As The Animal That Can Say ''i,'' That Can Be Aware Of Himself As A Separate Entity.

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.

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.

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

[sigmund ] Freud Did Not Under-stand That The Dream Is A Highly Creative Act, Written In The Universal Language Of Symbolism, And Only Secondarily Does Censorship Distort Those Parts That The Subject Refuses To Accept Even In Sleep.

Who Will Tell Whether One Happy Moment Of Love Or The Joy Of Breathing Or Walking On A Bright Morning And Smelling The Fresh Air, Is Not Worth All The Suffering And Effort Which Life Implies.

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

While Every Human Being Has A Capacity For Love, Its Realization Is One Of The Most Difficult Achievements.

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

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

The Quest For Certainty Blocks The Search For Meaning. Uncertainty Is The Very Condition To Impel Man To Unfold His Powers.

The Ownership Of Industry By The State - That Is Not Socialism.

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

Man Unites Himself With The World In The Process Of Creation.

Erotic Love Begins With Separateness, And Ends In Oneness. Motherly Love Begins With Oneness, And Leads To Separateness.

Man Absolutely Cannot Live By Himself.

Love Is The Active Concern For The Life And The Growth Of That Which We Love.

The Paradoxical And Tragic Situation Of Man Is That His Conscience Is Weakest When He Needs It Most.

Every Society By Its Own Practice Of Living And By The Mode Of Relatedness, Of Feelings, And Perceiving, Develops A System Of Categories Which Determines The Forms Of Awareness.

Man Can Never Stand Still. He Must Find Solutions To This Contradiction, And Ever Better Solutions To The Extent To Which Reality Enables Him.

If A Person Loves Only One Other Person And Is Indifferent To All Others, His Love Is Not Love But A Symbiotic Attachment, Or An Enlarged Egotism.

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.

Sleep Is Often The Only Occasion In Which Man Cannot Silence His Conscience; We Forget What We Knew In Our Dream.

Mobilizing The Love Of Life Is The Only Force That Can Defeat The Love For The Dead.

The Customer Is An Object To Be Manipulated, Not A Concrete Person Whose Aims The Businessman Is Interested To Satisfy.

I Think If You Ask People What Their Concept Of Heaven Is, They Would Say, If They Are Honest, That It Is A Big Department Store, With New Things Every Week - All The Money To Buy Them, And Maybe A Little More Than The Neighbours.

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.

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

For [sigmund ] Freud, The Manifest Dream, That Is That Which We Remember After Waking,is Like A Code Message, That Can Be Interpreted, Provided The Right Key Is Avail-able, For Example The Method Of Free Association.

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.

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.

I Would Say Our Social Relationships Are Relatively Shallow. We Are Actually Afraid To Be Intimate, With People - Many People Even With Their Wives And Husbands.

For [karl] Marx What Counts Is Man. He Is The Root Of Everything;while For Capitalism, The Aim Are Things, Profit, And Man Is Only A Means To Gain Them. As An Authentically Religious Individual, Marx Could Not Be Other Than Against "religion".

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.

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

Happiness Is A Man's Greatest Achievement; It Is The Response Of His Total Personality To A Productive Orientation Toward Himself And The World Outside.

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

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.

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.

...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?

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.

[carl Gustav] Jung Was Not Right When He Said That The Unconscious Message Is Always Written Clearly And So There Is No Need To Seek To Discover The Distortions, Because One Must Recognize That Many Dreams Are More Or Less Distortions.

The Person Who Gives Up His Individual Self And Becomes An Automaton, Identical With Millions Of Other Automatons Around Him, Need Not Feel Alone And Anxious Any More. But The Price He Pays, However, Is High; It Is The Loss Of His Self.

If One Is Not Productive In Other Spheres, One Is Not Productive In The Love Either.

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.

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.

Love Is The Productive Form Of Relatedness To Others And To Oneself. It Implies Responsibility, Care, Respect. If It Isn't Productive And Respectful, It Isn't Love, But Only Fear Masquerading As Love.

Creativity Is The Ability To See And To Respond.

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.

The Fact That Millions Of People Share The Same Vices Does Not Make These Vices Virtues, The Fact That They Share So Many Errors Does Not Make The Errors To Be Truths, And The Fact That Millions Of People Share The Same Form Of Mental Pathology Does Not Make These People Sane.

The Activity At This Very Moment Must Be The Only Thing That Matters, To Which One Is Fully Given. If One Is Concentrated, It Matters Little What One Is Doing. The Important, As Well As The Unimportant Things, Assume A New Dimension Of Reality, Because They Have One's Full Attention.

Unimportant Things

What We Have In Common Is A Mass Men, A Mass Bureaucracy, And A Manipulation Of Everyone To Act Smoothly, But With The Illusion That He Follows His Own Decisions And Opinions.

Love Is An Act Of Faith, And Whoever Is Of Little Faith Is Also Of Little Love.

Greedhas No Satiation Point, Since Its Consummation Does Not Fill The Inner Emptiness, Boredom, Loneliness, And Depression It Is Meant To Overcome.

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.

Not He Who Has Much Is Rich, But He Who Gives Much.

If We Love Our Fellow Humans, We Cannot Limit Our Insight And Our Love Only To Others As Individuals...we Have To Be Political People, I Would Even Say Passionately Involved Political People, Each Of Us In The Way That Best Suits Our Own Temperaments, Our Working Lives, And Our Own Capabilities.

There Is Hardly Any Activity, Any Enterprise, Which Is Started Out With Such Tremendous Hopes And Expectations, And Yet Which Fails So Regularly, As Love.

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. It Needs Men Who Feel Free And Independent, Not Subject To Any Authority Or Principle Or Conscience-- Yet Willing To Be Commanded, To Do What Is Expected Of Them, To Fit Into The Social Machine Without Friction; Who Can Be Guided Without Force, Led Without Leaders, Prompted Without Aim-- Except The One To Make Good, To Be On The Move, To Function, To Go Ahead.

The Spirit Of A Production-centered, Commodity-greedy Society Is Such That Only The Non-conformist Can Defend Himself Sufficiently Against It. Those Who Are Seriously Concerned With Love As The Only Rational Answer To The Problem Of Human Existence Must, Then, Arrive At The Conclusion That Important And Radical Changes In Our Social Structure Are Necessary, If Love Is To Become A Social And Not A Highly Individualistic, Marginal Phenomenon.

There Is Perhaps No Phenomenon Which Contains So Much Destructive Feeling As Moral Indignation, Which Permits Envy Or To Be Acted Out Under The Guise Of Virtue.

The Only Truly Affluent Are Those Who Do Not Want More Than They Have.

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.

Modern Man Thinks He Loses Something - Time - When He Does Not Do Things Quickly. Yet He Does Not Know What To Do With The Time He Gains, Except Kill It.

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.

Politics And Religious Leaders [are Hindered] By Their Egotism.

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.

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.

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

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

In Times Of Change, Learners Inherit The Earth

Times Have Changed

To Have Faith Requires Courage, The Ability To Take A Risk, The Readiness Even To Accept Pain And Disappointment. Whoever Insists On Safety And Security As Primary Conditions Of Life Cannot Have Faith; Whoever Shuts Himself Off In A System Of Defense, Where Distance And Possession Are His Means Of Security, Makes Himself A Prisoner. To Be Loved, And To Love, Need Courage, The Courage To Judge Certain Values As Of Ultimate Concern – And To Take The Jump And To Stake Everything On These Values.

In The First World War British Propaganda Had To Invent The Stories Of German Soldiers Bayoneting Belgian Babies, Because There Were Too Few Real Atrocities To Feed The Hatred Against The Enemy.

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.

Only In Being Productively Active Can Man Make Sense Of His Life.

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