Background Image

...

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.

-Erich Fromm

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Think If You

Erich Fromm

...

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.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Erich Fromm

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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 .

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

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

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

Modern Man Is Assailed On Every Side And Almost Without Interruption By Noise - Of The Radio, Of Television, Of Headlines, Of Advertising And Of The Cinema - Of Which The Greatest Part, Far From Enlightening The Mind, Blunts And Stultifies It.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Basically, There Can Only Be Two Answers. One Is To Overcome Separateness And Find Unity By Regression To The State Of Unity Which Existed Before Awareness Ever Arose, That Is, Before Man Was Born. The Other Answer Is To Be Fully Born, To Develop One's Awareness, One's Reason, One's Capacity To Love To Such A Point That One Transcends One's Own Egocentric Involvement, And Arrives At A New Harmony, At A New Oneness With The World.

Capacity To Love

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.

When People Can See A Vision And Simultaneously Recognize What Can Be Done Step By Step In A Concrete Way To Achieve It, They Will Begin To Feel Encouragement And Enthusiasm Instead Of Fright.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Destructiveness Is The Outcome Of An Unlived Life.

Destructiveness

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

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.

Love Is An Act Of Faith.

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

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

We Are Concerned With Things. We Are Concerned With Success. We Are Concerned With Money. We Are Concerned With Instrumentalities.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

We Have A Religious Renaissance Today In America, As Many People Say. I Would Say This Religious Renaissance, Ninety Percent Of It Is The Greatest Danger True Religious Experience Has Ever Been Confronted With.

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.

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

Meaning Of Life

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

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.

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.

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

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.

We Must Make A Decision Of Values.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.'

Man Is The Only Animal That Can Be Bored.

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

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

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

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

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

[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.

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.

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.

[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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

I Would Define Myself As A Marxian, And That Means Of Course Also As A Humanist.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Education Is Helping The Child Realise His Potentialities.

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.

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.

We All Dream; We Do Not Understand Our Dreams, Yet We Act As If Nothing Strange Goes On In Our Sleep Minds, Strange At Least By Comparison With The Logical, Purposeful Doings Of Our Minds When We Are Awake.

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

The Most Important Factor For The Development Of The Individual Is The Structure And The Values Of The Society Into Which He Was Born.

The Scars Left From The Child's Defeat In The Fight Against Irrational Authority Are To Be Found At The Bottom Of Every Neurosis.

To Be Concentrated Means To Live Fully In The Present.

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.

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

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

To Spare Oneself From Grief At All Cost Can Be Achieved Only At The Price Of Total Detachment, Which Excludes The Ability To Experience Happiness

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

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.

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

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?

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.

Human History Begins With Man's Act Of Disobedience Which Is At The Same Time The Beginning Of His Freedom And The Development Of His Reason.

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

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

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

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

Frame Of Reference

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.

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

Different Faces

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?

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Psychoanalysis , Which Interprets The Human Being As A Socialized Being, And The Psychic Apparatus As Essentially Developed And Determined Through The Relationship Of The Individual To Society, Must Consider It A Duty To Participate In The Investigation Of Sociological Problems To The Extent The Human Being Or His/her Psyche Plays Any Part At All.

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

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.

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

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

Man 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

What You Might Call The "symbol Pushers" - That Is To Say, All Of The People Who Deal With Figures, With Paper, With Men, Who Manipulate - To Use A Better Or Nicer Word - Manipulate Men And Signs And Words. All Those Today Have Not Only To Sell Their Service, But In The Bargain, They Have To Sell Their Personality, More Or Less. There Are Exceptions.

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.

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.

Our Society Is Run By A Managerial Bureaucracy, By Professional Politicians; People Are Motivated By Mass Suggestion, Their Aim Is Producing More And Consuming More, As Purposes In Themselves.

Freedom Does Not Mean License.

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.

A Society Whose Principles Are Acquisition, Profit, And Property Produces A Social Character Oriented Around Having, And Once The Dominant Pattern Is Established, Nobody Wants To Be An Outsider, Or Indeed An Outcast; In Order To Avoid This Risk Everybody Adapts To The Majority, Who Have In Common Only Their Mutual Antagonism.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The History Of Man So Far Is Nothing To Brag About, From The Standpoint Of Our Ideas - And What I Mean Is, That In Comparison With Most Other Societies, Our Present-day American Society Has Achieved Things Which Are Remarkable: Material Wealth, Greater Than For Any Other Nation; A Relative Freedom From Oppression; A Relative Mobility; A Spreading Of Art, Of Music, Of Thought, Which Is Also Rather Unique.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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'.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

[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.

Trending Author

Augusto Pinochet

Grover Cleveland

Category