Background Image

...

. . . 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.

-Erich Fromm

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

. . . Freedom

Erich Fromm

...

. . . 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.

Views: 10

Topic

More From Erich Fromm

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

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

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.

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.

Modern Man Has Transformed Himself Into A Commodity; He Experiences His Life Energy As An Investment With Which He Should Make The Highest Profit, Considering His Position And The Situation On The Personality Market. He Is Alienated From Himself, From His Fellow Men And From Nature. His Main Aim Is Profitable Exchange Of His Skills, Knowledge, And Of Himself, His "personality Package" With Others Who Are Equally Intent On A Fair And Profitable Exchange. Life Has No Goal Except The One To Move, No Principle Except The One Of Fair Exchange, No Satisfaction Except The One To Consume.p97.

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.

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

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.

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

[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.

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

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

[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.

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.

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.

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

The Duty To Be Alive Is The Same As The Duty To Become Oneself, To Develop Into The Individual One Potentially Is.

I Want To Mention That Marx Shares Something, If You Don't Mind The Comparison, With The Old Testament: Many People Talk About Him, But Nobody Has Read Him.

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

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

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

From My Personal Experience I Can Conclude That Many Dreams Are Clearly Written But There Are Some In Which One Meets Distortions To Decipher. And It Is Really In Knowing When One Must Prefer The One Or The Other Approach, Or A Combination Of The Two, That Remains One Of The Important Elements Of The Art Of Dream Interpretation.

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

Falling In Love

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.

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

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.

[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.

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.

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?

Education Is Helping The Child Realise His Potentialities.

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.

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

Frame Of Reference

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

In The Dream, Sheltered From The Noise, The Subject Expressed A Judgment Much More On The Mark Than That Manifested In Wakefulness.

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

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

Destructiveness Is The Outcome Of An Unlived Life.

Destructiveness

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.

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.

When The Theory Of Evolution Destroyed The Picture Of God As The Supreme Creator, Confidence In God As The All-powerful Father Of Man Fell With It, Although Many Were Able To Combine A Belief In God With The Acceptance Of The Darwinian Theory.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Men Are Born Equal But They Are Also Born Different.

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

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

Knowing Who You Are

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.

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.

. . . 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Happiness Should Be Something Which Results From The Creative, Genuine, Intense Relatedness - Awareness, Responsiveness, To Everything In Life - To Man, To Nature.

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.

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

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

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

Capacity To Love

Death Is Never Sweet, Not Even If It Is Suffered For The Highest Ideal.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

We Forget That, Although Freedom Of Speech Constitutes An Important Victory In The Battle Against Old Restraints, Modern Man Is In A Position Where Much Of What "he" Thinks And Says Are The Things That Everybody Else Thinks And Says; That He Has Not Acquired The Ability To Think Originally - That Is, For Himself - Which Alone Gives Meaning To His Claim That Nobody Can Interfere With The Expression Of His Thoughts.

By Equality, One Once Understood Equality In The Very Same Sense In Which The Bible Speaks Of Equality: That We Are All Equal, Inasmuch As We Are Created In The Image Of God.

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

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.

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

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.

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 Have Learnt To Appreciate The Clarity Of English Language.

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

Meaning Of Life

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 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.

A Relatively Primitive Village In Which There Are Still Real Feasts, Common Artistic Shared Expressions, And No Literacy At All Is More Advanced Culturally And More Healthy Mentally Than Our Educated, Newspaper-reading Radio-listening Culture.

Well-being Is Possible To The Degree To Which One Has Overcome One's Narcissism; To The Degree To Which One Is Open, Responsive, Sensitive, Awake, Empty.... Well-being Means, Finally, To Drop One's Ego, To Give Up Greed, To Cease Chasing After Preservation And The Aggrandizement Of The Ego, To Be And To Experience One's Self In The Act Of Being, Not In Having, Preserving, Coveting, Using.

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

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

An Illusion Shared By Everyone Becomes A Reality.

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.

According To Me [sigmund ] Freud Did Not Notice That The Dream Expresses The Inner Experiences In A Symbolic Form,resembling In That, Poetry Or Other Art Forms.

Man Today Being Concerned With Production And Consumption As Ends In Themselves, Has Very Little Engergy Time To Devote Himself To The True Religious Experience.

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

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.

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.

...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?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Creativity Requires The Courage To Let Go Of Certainties.

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

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.

Our Whole Culture Is Based On The Appetite For Buying, On The Idea Of A Mutually Favorable Exchange. .... For The Man An Attractive Girl - And For The Woman An Attractive Man - Are The Prizes They Are After. 'attractive' Usually Means A Nice Package Of Qualities Which Are Popular And Sought After On The Personality Market. What Specifically Makes A Person Attractive Depends On The Fashion Of The Time, Physically As Well As Mentally. ... Two Persons Thus Fall In Love When They Feel They Have Found The Best Object Available On The Market, Considering The Limitations Of Their Own Exchange Values.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 .

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

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.

Many Psychiatrists And Psychologists Refuse To Entertain The Idea That Society As A Whole May Be Lacking In Sanity. They Hold That The Problem Of Mental Health In A Society Is Only That Of The Number Of 'unadjusted' Individuals, And Not Of A Possible Unadjustment Of The Culture Itself.

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

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.

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

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

I Need You Because I Love You.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Every Act Of Irreverence For Life, Every Act Which Neglects Life, Which Is Indifferent To And Wastes Life, Is A Step Towards The Love Of Death. This Choice Man Must Make At Every Minute. Never Were The Consequences Of The Wrong Choice As Total And As Irreversible As They Are Today. Never Was The Warning Of The Bible So Urgent: 'i Have Put Before You Life And Death, Blessing And Curse. Choose Life, That You And Your Children May Live.'

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.

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.

Is Love An Art? Then It Requires Knowledge And Effort. Love Is Not A Spontaneous Feeling, A Thing That You Fall Into, But Is Something That Requires Thought, Knowledge, Care, Giving, And Respect. And It Is Something That Is Rare And Difficult To Find In Capitalism, Which Commodifies Human Activity.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

We Must Make A Decision Of Values.

Let Your Mind Start A Journey Through A Strange New World. Leave All Thoughts Of The World You Knew Before. Let Your Soul Take You Where You Long To Be. Close Your Eyes, Let Your Spirit Start To Soar, And You’ll Live As You’ve Never Lived Before.

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.

Man Does Not Only Sell Commodities, He Sells Himself And Feels Himself To Be A Commodity.

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.

Love Is A Power Which Produces Love.

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

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.

Integrity Simply Means Not Violating One's Own Identity.

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

There Is Undoubtedly A Difference Between People Who Manipulate Other People And People Who Create Things.

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.

Hate Is A Product Of The Unfulfilled Life.

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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

Trending Author

David F. Houston

Henrique Capriles Radonski

Anne M. Mulcahy

Category