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

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

Understanding the Quote: "if you take a salesman, who sells a useless commodity, he feels..."

This quote by Erich Fromm reflects deeply on the theme of useless. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Useless, Commodity, Fraud, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Erich Fromm interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm is celebrated for insightful thoughts on useless and commodity. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Useless
Commodity
Fraud
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Even The Most Sadistic And Destructive Man Is Human, As Human As The Saint.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The Fact Is That The Culture Does Not Have Only Positive Effects On Our Intellectual And Moral Functions But Also Negative Effects.
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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.
Country
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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.
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I Have Learnt To Appreciate The Clarity Of English Language.
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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.
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Giving Is The Highest Expression Of Potency.
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Man Is The Only Animal That Can Be Bored.
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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.
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Education Is Helping The Child Realise His Potentialities.
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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.
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An Illusion Shared By Everyone Becomes A Reality.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Like The Effect Of Advertising Upon The Customer, The Methods Of Political Propaganda Tend To Increase The Feeling Of Insignificance Of The Individual Voter.
Tyrants
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Sanity Is Only That Which Is Within The Frame Of Reference Of Conventional Thought.
Sanity
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The State Of Sleep Is A State Of Freedom In Which Man Is Not Occupied With The Manipulation Of The Outside World.
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If An Individual Is Able To Love Productively, He Loves Himself, Too; If He Can Love Only Others, He Cannot Love At All.
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We Live In A World Of Things, And Our Only Connection With Them Is That We Know How To Manipulate Or To Consume Them.
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Fairness Means Not To Use Fraud And Trickery In The Exchange Of Commodities And Services And The Exchange Of Feelings.
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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.
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In The Nineteenth Century The Problem Was That God Is Dead. In The Twentieth Century The Problem Is That Man Is Dead.
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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.
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[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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Man Can Be Conditioned To Behave In Almost Every Desired Way; But Only "almost.
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...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?
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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.
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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.
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To Die Is Poignantly Bitter, But The Idea Of Having To Die Without Having Lived Is Unbearable.
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Outcomes
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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.
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Modern Man Lives Under The Illusion That He Knows What He Wants, While He Actually Wants What He Is Supposed To Want.
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To Love Somebody Is Not Just A Strong Feeling - It Is A Decision, It Is A Judgment, It Is A Promise.
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Decision
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The Individual Citizen Has Very Little Possibility Of Having Any Influence - Of Making His Opinion Felt In The Decision-making.
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Citizens
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Narcissism
You Have To Stop In Order To Change Direction.
Order
Both Dreams And Myths Are Important Communications From Ourselves To Ourselves.
Dream
Communication
Important
Man Unites Himself With The World In The Process Of Creation.
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Self
Progress
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People
Lovers
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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.
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Desire
Purpose
The Experience Of Separateness Arouses Anxiety; It Is, Indeed, The Source Of All Anxiety.
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Source
Nonviolent Communication
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Happiness Should Be Something Which Results From The Creative, Genuine, Intense Relatedness - Awareness, Responsiveness, To Everything In Life - To Man, To Nature.
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Creative
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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.
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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.
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Thinking
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Love Of Others And Love Of Ourselves Are Not Alternatives. On The Contrary, An Attitude Of Love Towards Themselves Will Be Found In All Those Who Are Capable Of Loving Others.
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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.
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Human History Began With An Act Of Disobedience And It Is Not Unlikely That It Will Be Terminated By An Act Of Obedience.
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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.
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Hate Is A Product Of The Unfulfilled Life.
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Hate
Products
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.
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Men
Unity
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.
Destiny
Order
Years
In Love The Paradox Occurs That Two Beings Become One And Yet Remain Two.
Love
Smile
Two
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.
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Objectivity
There Is No Meaning To Life Except The Meaning Man Gives His Life By The Unfolding Of His Powers.
Life
Power
Men
If I Am What I Have And If I Lose What I Have Who Then Am I?
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Criminal Mind
Ifs
The Essential Difference Between The Unhappy, Neurotic Type Person And Him Of Great Joy Is The Difference Between Get And Give.
Differences
Giving
Joy
The Right To Express Our Thoughts Means Something Only If We Are Able To Have Thoughts Of Our Own
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Able
Our Thoughts
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.
Personality
Want
Way
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.
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Romantic
Faith
Integrity Simply Means A Willingness Not To Violate One's Identity, In The Many Ways In Which Such Violation Is Possible.
Integrity
Mean
Identity
Greed Is A Bottomless Pit Which Exhausts The Person In An Endless Effort To Satisfy The Need Without Ever Reaching Satisfaction.
Effort
Greed
Needs
The Most Important Things We Talk About On Sundays Are Things To Which We Pay Very Little Attention.
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Important
Littles
I Love In You Everybody, I Love Through You The World, I Love In You Also Myself.
World
Art Of Loving
Love Is Union With Somebody, Or Something, Outside Oneself, Under The Condition Of Retaining The Separateness And Integrity Of One's Own Self.
Soulmate
Integrity
Love You
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.
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Independent
Men
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.
Happiness
Men
Personality
Optimism Is An Alienated Form Of Faith, Pessimism An Alienated Form Of Despair.
Optimism
Despair
Pessimism
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.
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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.
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Discipline
Feelings
Immature Love Says: 'i Love You Because I Need You.' Mature Love Says 'i Need You Because I Love You.'
Love
Life
Romantic
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.
Running
People
Suggestions
The Pleasure In Complete Domination Over Another Person (or Other Animate Creature) Is The Very Essence Of The Sadistic Drive. Another Way Of Formulating The Same Thought Is To Say That The Aim Of Sadism Is To Transform Man Into A Thing, Something Animate Into Something Inanimate, Since By Complete And Absolute Control The Living Loses One Essential Quality Of Life - Freedom.
Men
Essence
Quality
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.
Real
Nice
Kind
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.
Eye
Journey
Long
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.
Elude Us
Goal
Effort
It Is A Tragedy That Most Of Us Die Before We Have Begun To Live.
Death
Tragedy
Dies
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.
Commitment
Reflection
Self
To Have Faith Requires Courage, The Ability To Take A Risk, The Readiness Even To Accept Pain And Disappointment. Whoever Insists On Safety And Security As Primary Conditions Of Life Cannot Have Faith; Whoever Shuts Himself Off In A System Of Defense, Where Distance And Possession Are His Means Of Security, Makes Himself A Prisoner. To Be Loved, And To Love, Need Courage, The Courage To Judge Certain Values As Of Ultimate Concern – And To Take The Jump And To Stake Everything On These Values.
Love
Pain
Disappointment
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.
Men
Decision
Manipulation
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.
Country
Responsibility
Thinking
One Cannot Fall In Love, Really; One Has To Be In Love.
Falling In Love
Fall
. . . 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.
Love Life
Men
Venture
The Ownership Of Industry By The State - That Is Not Socialism.
Socialism
Ownership
States
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.
Dream
Art
Two
The Most Important Influence On A Child Is The Character Of Its Parents, Rather Than This Or That Single Event.
Children
Character
Parent
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?
Dream
Sleep
Reality
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.
Character
Simple
Order
Man May Be Defined As The Animal That Can Say ''i,'' That Can Be Aware Of Himself As A Separate Entity.
Animal
Men
Identity
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.
Love
Reality
Growth
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 .
Hurt
Integrity
Emotional
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.
Christian
Mean
Special
While Every Human Being Has A Capacity For Love, Its Realization Is One Of The Most Difficult Achievements.
Love
Achievement
Realization
The Manual Worker Does Not Have To Sell His Personality. He Doesn't Have To Sell His Smile.
Personality
Doe
His Smile
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.
Dream
Sleep
Understanding
The Root Of The Word Education Is E-ducere, Literally, To Lead Forth, Or To Bring Out Something Which Is Potentially Present.
Learning
Roots
A Person Who Has Not Been Completely Alienated, Who Has Remained Sensitive And Able To Feel, Who Has Not Lost The Sense Of Dignity, Who Is Not Yet 'for Sale', Who Can Still Suffer Over The Suffering Of Others, Who Has Not Acquired Fully The Having Mode Of Existence - Briefly, A Person Who Has Remained A Person And Not Become A Thing - Cannot Help Feeling Lonely, Powerless, Isolated In Present-day Society.
Lonely
Suffering Of Others
Feelings
The Task We Must Set For Ourselves Is Not To Feel Secure, But To Be Able To Tolerate Insecurity.
Business
Inner Peace
Insecurity
That Is Not Quite Enough To Make One Happy, If One Spends Eight Hours A Day In Something Which In Itself Has No Meaning And Interest, Except That One Gains Money From It.
Eight
Gains
Hours
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.
Art
Mean
Unique
Only The Person Who Has Faith In Himself Is Able To Be Faithful To Others.
Faith
Confidence
Able
This Marxian Sentence, Repeated To The Point Of Boredom, Is Misinterpreted. In Reality [karl] Marx Was A "religious" Man.
Religious
Reality
Men
It Is Time To Cease To Argue About God , And Instead To Unite In The Unmasking Of Contemporary Forms Of Idolatry.
Unmasking
Arguing
Form
If You Want A Big Brother, You Get All That Comes With It.
Brother
Government
Liberty
In The 19th Century Inhumanity Meant Cruelty; In The 20th Century It Means Schizoid Self-alienation.
Mean
Self
Century
The Average American Never Loses His Sleep About Affairs Which Relate To His Society And To Our Whole Country.
Country
Sleep
Average
That Millions Of People Share The Same Forms Of Mental Pathology Does Not Make These People Sane.
People
Doe
Sanity
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.
Love
Life
Two
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.
Inspirational
Love Is
Greatest Love
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.
Powerful
Book
Ideas
I Believe That The Fundamental Alternative For Man Is The Choice Between "life" And "death"; Between Creativity And Destructive Violence; Between Reality And Illusions; Between Objectivity And Intolerance; Between Brotherhood-independence And Dominance-submission.
Believe
Creativity
Reality
If The Handbag Could Think, It Would Have A Terrific Inferiority Feeling, Because, Not Having Been Bought, It Would Feel Useless.
Thinking
Feelings
Handbags
Exclusive Love Is A Contradiction In Itself.
Love
Contradiction
Exclusive
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.
Religious
America
People
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.
Love
Mean
Sacrifice
A Dream Is A Microscope Through Which We Look At The Hidden Occurrences In Our Soul.
Dream
Soul
Looks
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.'
Children
Blessing
Men
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.
Men
Giving
Judging
If One Is Not Productive In Other Spheres, One Is Not Productive In The Love Either.
Spheres
Ifs
Productive
Man Does Not Only Sell Commodities, He Sells Himself And Feels Himself To Be A Commodity.
Men
Marketing
Doe
There Is Only One Reality: The Act Of Feeling Ourselves In The Process Of Making Choices.
Inspirational
Reality
Choices
Man Absolutely Cannot Live By Himself.
Helping Others
Men
People
Care And Responsibility Are Constituent Elements Of Love, But Without Respect For And Knowledge Of The Beloved Person, Love Deteriorates Into Domination And Possessiveness.
Responsibility
Elements
Care
Sleep Is Often The Only Occasion In Which Man Cannot Silence His Conscience; We Forget What We Knew In Our Dream.
Dream
Sleep
Men
Creativity Requires The Courage To Let Go Of Certainties.
Letting Go
Spiritual
Courage
To Be Concentrated Means To Live Fully In The Present.
Mean
Concentration
The Spirit Of A Production-centered, Commodity-greedy Society Is Such That Only The Non-conformist Can Defend Himself Sufficiently Against It. Those Who Are Seriously Concerned With Love As The Only Rational Answer To The Problem Of Human Existence Must, Then, Arrive At The Conclusion That Important And Radical Changes In Our Social Structure Are Necessary, If Love Is To Become A Social And Not A Highly Individualistic, Marginal Phenomenon.
Life
Love Is
Important
One Of The Worst Forms Of Mental Suffering Is Boredom, Not Knowing What To Do With Oneself And One's Life. Even If Man Had No Monetary, Or Any Other Reward, He Would Be Eager To Spend His Energy In Some Meaningful Way Because He Could Not Stand The Boredom Which Inactivity Produces.
Meaningful
Men
Knowing
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.
Political
Intellectual
Progress
Love Is A Power Which Produces Love.
Love Is
Produce
The Need For The Creation Of Collective Art And Ritual On A Nonclerical Basis Is At Least As Important As Literacy And Higher Education.
Art
Important
Needs
When People Can't Handle God Any More, They Turn To Religion.
People
Religion
Turns
The Ordinary Man With Extraordinary Power Is The Chief Danger For Mankind - Not The Fiend Or The Sadist.
Fear
Power
Men
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.
Christian
Mean
Reflection
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.
Powerful
Father
Acceptance
Paradoxically, The Ability To Be Alone Is The Condition For The Ability To Love.
Ability To Love
Ability
Art Of Loving
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.
Love
Knowledge
Desire
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.
Religious
Animal
Men
I Believe That The Experience Of Love Is The Most Human And Humanizing Act That It Is Given To Man To Enjoy And That It, Like Reason, Makes No Sense If Conceived In A Partial Way.
Life
Believe
Love Is
As We Ascend The Social Ladder, Viciousness Wears A Thicker Mask.
Ladders
Injustice
Mask
Giving Is More Joyous Than Receiving, Not Because It Is A Deprivation, But Because In The Act Of Giving Lies The Expression Of My Aliveness.
Inspirational
Motivational
Lying
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.
Thinking
Track
Blind
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.
Love Is
Men
Becoming One
In Times Of Change, Learners Inherit The Earth
Leadership
Times Have Changed
Earth
There Is Hardly Any Activity, Any Enterprise, Which Is Started Out With Such Tremendous Hopes And Expectations, And Yet Which Fails So Regularly, As Love.
Love
Hope
Expectations
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.
Hero
Passion
Men
Erotic Love Begins With Separateness, And Ends In Oneness. Motherly Love Begins With Oneness, And Leads To Separateness.
Love
Oneness
Erotic
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.
Men
Fellow Man
Commodity
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.
Home
Animal
Men
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.
Love
Life
Attachment
Man's Biological Weakness Is The Condition Of Human Culture.
Men
Weakness
Culture
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.
Fear
Thinking
Religion
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.
Men
Challenges
Humanity
The Scars Left From The Child's Defeat In The Fight Against Irrational Authority Are To Be Found At The Bottom Of Every Neurosis.
Children
Fighting
Neurosis
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