Background Image

...

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.

-Erich Fromm

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Freedom Is Not A

Erich Fromm

...

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.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Erich Fromm

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

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

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.

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 .

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

Boredom Is Nothing But The Experience Of A Paralysis Of Our Productive Powers.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Most People Die Before They Are Fully Born. Creativeness Means To Be Born Before One Dies.

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.

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.

One Cannot Be Deeply Responsive To The World Without Being Saddened Very Often.

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

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

. . . Freedom To Creat And Construct, To Wonder And To Venture. Such Freedom Requires That The Individual Be Active And Responsible, Not A Slave Or A Well-fed Cog In The Machine . . . It Is Not Enough That Men Are Not Slaves; If Social Conditions Further The Existence Of Automatons, The Result Will Not Be Love Of Life, But Love Of Death.

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.

The Real Opposition Is That Between The Ego-bound Man, Whose Existence Is Structured By The Principle Of Having, And The Free Man, Who Has Overcome His Egocentricity.

I Think, To Be Specific, We Got Off The Track When We Concentrated More And More On Production Of Things. Thereby, We Created A Split Between Intellect And Emotion, Because, In Order To Produce A Modern Technique, You Have To Use Intellect, And We Have Created Men Who Are Very Brilliant, Who Are Very Clever, But Our Emotional Life Has Become Impoverished.

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

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

Man Always Dies Before He Is Fully Born.

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.

Integrity Simply Means Not Violating One's Own Identity.

I Believe That Man Is The Product Of Natural Evolution That Is Born From The Conflict Of Being A Prisoner And Separated From Nature, And From The Need To Find Unity And Harmony With It.

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

All Great Art Is By Its Very Essence In Conflict With The Society With Which It Exists. It Expresses The Truth About The Existence Regardless Of Whether This Truth Serves Or Hinders The Survival Purpose Of A Given Society. All Great Art Is Revolutionary Because It Touches Upon The Reality Of Man And Questions The Reality Of The Various Transitory Forms Of Human Society.

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

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

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.

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.

Men Are Born Equal But They Are Also Born Different.

Creativity Is The Ability To See And To Respond.

The Successful Revolutionary Is A Statesman, The Unsuccessful One A Criminal.

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.

The Deepest Need Of The Human Being Is To Overcome Our Separateness, To Leave The Prison Of Our Loneliness.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Education Makes Machines Which Act Like Men And Produces Men Who Act Like Machines.

If Other People Do Not Understand Our Behavior-so What? Their Request That We Must Only Do What They Understand Is An Attempt To Dictate To Us. If This Is Being 'asocial' Or 'irrational' In Their Eyes, So Be It. Mostly They Resent Our Freedom And Our Courage To Be Ourselves. We Owe Nobody An Explanation Or An Accounting, As Long As Our Acts Do Not Hurt Or Infringe On Them.

The Experience Of Separateness Arouses Anxiety; It Is, Indeed, The Source Of All Anxiety.

Nonviolent Communication

Critical And Radical Thought Will Only Bear Fruit When It Is Blended With The Most Precious Quality Man Is Endowed With - The Love Of Life

In Love The Paradox Occurs That Two Beings Become One And Yet Remain Two.

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.

It Is Time To Cease To Argue About God , And Instead To Unite In The Unmasking Of Contemporary Forms Of Idolatry.

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

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

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

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.

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

One Cannot Fall In Love, Really; One Has To Be In Love.

Falling In 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

Love Is Not Primarily A Relationship To A Specific Person; It Is An Attitude, An Ordination Of Character Which Determines The Relatedness Of The Person To The Whole World As A Whole, Not Toward One Object Of Love

If I Love The Other Person, I Feel One With Him Or Her, But With Him As He Is, Not As I Need Him To Be As An Object For My Use. Respect Thus Implies The Absence Of Exploitation: It Allows The Other To Be, To Change And To Develop 'in His Own Ways.' This Requires A Commitment To Know The Other As A Separate Being, And Not Merely As A Reflection Of My Own Ego. According To Velleman This Loving Willingness And Ability To See The Other As They Really Are Is Foregrounded In Our Willingness To Risk Self-exposure.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Immature Love Says: 'i Love You Because I Need You.' Mature Love Says 'i Need You Because I Love You.'

I Am A Socialist. However, I Have To Add That What I Understand By Socialism Is Exactly The Opposite Of What Many People, Or Most People, Today Mean By Socialism.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Can One Have Love? If We Could, Love Would Need To Be A Thing, A Substance That One Can Have, Own, Possess. The Truth Is, There Is No Such Thing As Love. Love Is An Abstraction, Perhaps A Goddess Or An Alien Being, Although Nobody Has Ever Seen This Goddess. In Reality, There Exists Only The Act Of Loving. To Love Is A Productive Activity. It Implies Caring For, Knowing, Responding, Affirming, Enjoying: The Person, The Tree, The Painting, The Idea. It Means Bringing To Life, Increasing His/her/its Aliveness. It Is A Process, Self-renewing And Self Increasing.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Hoarders, Who Are Anxiously Worried About Losing Something, Are, Psychologically Speaking, The Poor Impoverished People, Regardless Of How Much They Have. Whoever Is Capable Of Giving Of Themselves Is Rich.

Man Is The Only Animal That Can Be Bored.

In Our Enthusiasm To Dominate Nature And To Produce More Material Good - Goods - We Have Transformed Means Into Ends.

All Genuine Ideals Have One Thing In Common: They Express The Desire For Something Which Is Not Yet Accomplished But Which Is Desirable For The Purpose Of The Growth And Happiness Of The Individual.

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.

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.

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.

Our Main Way Of Relating Ourselves To Others Is Like Things Relate Themselves To Things On The Market. We Want To Exchange Our Own Personality - Or As One Says Sometimes, Our "personality Package" - For Something.

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

We Are All Equal In The Sense That No Man Must Mean - Must Be - The Means For The Purposes Of Another Man; But Each Individual Is An End In Itself.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

An Illusion Shared By Everyone Becomes A Reality.

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

The Right To Express Our Thoughts Means Something Only If We Are Able To Have Thoughts Of Our Own

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.

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.

The Russians Have Succeeded In One Thing: They Have Sold The World The Idea That They Represent Socialism And The Ideas Of Marx,and We Have Done The Greatest Service To Their Propaganda By Agreeing That That's What It Is.

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.

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

Close Your Eyes, Let Your Spirit Start To Soar, And You'll Live As You've Never Lived Before.

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

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.

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

A Vast Sector Of Modern Advertising... Does Not Appeal To Reason But To Emotion; Like Any Other Kind Of Hypnoid Suggestion, It Tries To Impress Its Objects Emotionally And Then Make Them Submit Intellectually.

Man Absolutely Cannot Live By Himself.

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.

The Destruction Of The World Is The Last, Almost Desperate Attempt To Save Myself From Being Crushed By It

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.

Also In Contemporary Western Society The Union With The Group Is The Prevalent Way Of Overcoming Separateness. It Is A Union Which The Individual Self Disappears To A Large Extent, And Where The Aim Is To Belong To The Heard. If I Am Like Everybody Else, If I Have No Feeling Or Thoughts Which Make Me Different, If I Conform In Custom, Dress, Ideas, To The Pattern Of The Group, I Am Saved: Saved From The Frightening Experience Of Aloneness.

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

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.

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.

It Is Naively Assumed That The Fact That The Majority Of People Share Certain Ideas And Feelings Proves The Validity Of These Ideas And Feelings. Nothing Could Be Further From The Truth. Consensual Validation As Such Has No Bearing On Reason Or Mental Health.

People Seek A New Orientation, A New Philosophy, One Which Is Centered On The Priorities Of Life-physically And Spiritually-and Not On The Priorities Of Death.

Once They Are Through The Process Of Education, Most People Lose The Capacity Of Wondering, Of Being Surprised. They Feel They Ought To Know Everything, And Hence That It Is A Sign Of Ignorance To Be Surprised Or Puzzled By Anything.

You Have To Stop In Order To Change Direction.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

In The Sleeping State, Instead, One Is Much More Oneself, Even If Society Never Ceases To Intervene.

Just As Love Is An Orientation Which Refers To All Objects And Is Incompatible With The Restriction To One Object, So Is Reason A Human Faculty Which Must Embrace The Whole Of The World With Which Man Is Confronted.

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

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

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.

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

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.

We Are Not On The Way To Greater Individualism, But Are Becoming An Increasingly Manipulated Mass Civilization.

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

Mother's Love Is Bliss, Is Peace, It Need Not Be Acquired, It Need Not Be Deserved. If It Is There, It Is Like A Blessing; If It Is Not There It Is As If All The Beauty Had Gone Out Of Life.

The Lust For Power Is Not Rooted In Strength But In Weakness.

Our Vitality, And The Vitality Of Each Nation, Rests On The Sincerity And Depth Of The Faith In The Ideas Which It Announces, Or Pronounces.

I Feel Worried, Deeply Worried, Only About One Thing - The Possibility That We Fall... That We Cannot Avoid An Atomic War.

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.

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.

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

Ideas Become Powerful Only If They Appear In The Flesh; An Idea Which Does Not Lead To Action By The Individual And By Groups Remains At Best A Paragraph Or A Footnote In A Book.

Love Is A Power Which Produces Love.

To Be Concentrated Means To Live Fully In The Present.

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.

What Is Common To Our Societies Is The Development Into A Managed Mass Society, With Big Bureaucracy, Managing People. The Russians Do It By Force. We Do It By Persuasion.

We Talk A Great Deal About Russia Today, And I'm Afraid That In Twenty Years, We And Russia Will Be More Similar Than Different.

Jewish Legend Says That The World Rests On 36 Just Men: Only Thirty Six, But Their Moral Strength Is Immense.

In Erotic Love, Two People Who Were Separate Become One. In Motherly Love, Two People Who Were One Become Separate. The Mother Must Not Only Tolerate, She Must Wish And Support The Child's Separation.

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

Destructiveness Is The Outcome Of An Unlived Life.

Destructiveness

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.

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.

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.

The Affirmation Of One's Own Life, Happiness, Growth And Freedom, Is Rooted In One's Capacity To Love.

Capacity To Love

I Love In You Everybody, I Love Through You The World, I Love In You Also Myself.

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

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

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

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.

There Is No Meaning To Life Except The Meaning Man Gives His Life By The Unfolding Of His Powers.

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.

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

You Have To Stop To Change Direction.

Our Conscious Motivations, Ideas, And Beliefs Are A Blend Of False Information, Biases, Irrational Passions, Rationalizations, Prejudices, In Which Morsels Of Truth Swim Around And Give The Reassurance Albeit False, That The Whole Mixture Is Real And True. The Thinking Processes Attempt To Organize This Whole Cesspool Of Illusions According To The Laws Of Plausibility. This Level Of Consciousness Is Supposed To Reflect Reality; It Is The Map We Use For Organizing Our Life.

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.

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?

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

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.

Greed Is A Bottomless Pit Which Exhausts The Person In An Endless Effort To Satisfy The Need Without Ever Reaching Satisfaction.

Love, Experienced Thus, Is A Constant Challenge; It Is Not A Resting Place, But A Moving, Growing, Working Together; Even Whether There Is Harmony Or Conflict; Joy Or Sadness, Is Secondary To The Fundamental Fact That Two People Experience Themselves From The Essence Of Their Existence, That They Are Only One With Each Other By Being One With Themselves, Rather Than By Fleeing From Themselves.

Sanity Is Only That Which Is Within The Frame Of Reference Of Conventional Thought.

Frame Of Reference

Creativity Requires The Courage To Let Go Of Certainties.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Women Are Equal Because They Are Not Different Any More.

There Can Be No Real Freedom Without The Freedom To Fail.

Love Is The Child Of Freedom, Never That Of Domination.

If Faith Cannot Be Reconciled With Rational Thinking, It Has To Be Eliminated As An Anachronistic Remnant Of Earlier Stages Of Culture And Replaced By Science Dealing With Facts And Theories Which Are Intelligible And Can Be Validated.

Trending Author

Atifete Jahjaga

Barry Goldwater

Category