Background Image

...

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.

-Erich Fromm

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

It Is Essential... That

Erich Fromm

...

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.

Views: 5

Topic

More From Erich Fromm

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Freedom Is The Fundamental Condition For Any Growth.

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

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

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.

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?

Love Is A Power Which Produces Love.

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.

For The Most Part, Biophiliacs,lovers Of Life, Are Found Among Simple People, Without Pretensions.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Love Is Union With Somebody, Or Something, Outside Oneself, Under The Condition Of Retaining The Separateness And Integrity Of One's Own Self.

...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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Authority Is Not A Quality One Person 'has,' In The Sense That He Has Property Or Physical Qualities. Authority Refers To An Interpersonal Relation In Which One Person Looks Upon Another As Somebody Superior To Him.

If 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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Freedom Does Not Mean License.

In The Nineteenth Century The Problem Was That God Is Dead. In The Twentieth Century The Problem Is That Man Is Dead.

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.

Reason Is Man's Faculty For Grasping The World By Thought, In Contradiction To Intelligence, Which Is Man's Ability To Manipulate The World With The Help Of Thought. Reason Is Man's Instrument For Arriving At The Truth, Intelligence Is Man's Instrument For Manipulating The World More Successfully; The Former Is Essentially Human, The Latter Belongs To The Animal Part Of Man.

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 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 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.

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

Capacity To Love

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.

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.

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

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

In The Dominant Western Religious System, The Love Of God Is Essentially The Same As The Belief In God, In God’s Existence, God’s Justice, God’s Love. The Love Of God Is Essentially A Thought Experience. In The Eastern Religions And In Mysticism, The Love Of God Is An Intense Feeling Experience Of Oneness, Inseparably Linked With The Expression Of This Love In Every Act Of Living.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Falling In Love

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Destructiveness Is The Outcome Of An Unlived Life.

Destructiveness

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

Man Is The Only Animal That Can Be Bored.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Happiness Is A Very Proud Word Of Our Whole Cultural Heritage.

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

I Think American Man Unconsciously Hates His Work Very Often, Because He Feels Trapped By It... Imprisoned By It... Because He Feels That He Is Spending Most Of His Energy For Something Which Has No Meaning In Itself.

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.

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

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.

In Times Of Change, Learners Inherit The Earth

Times Have Changed

In The 19th Century Inhumanity Meant Cruelty; In The 20th Century It Means Schizoid Self-alienation.

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

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

Hate Is A Product Of The Unfulfilled Life.

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

Love Is Active Penetration Of The Other Person, In Which My Desire To Know Is Stilled By Union. In The Act Of Fusion I Know You, I Know Myself, I Know Everybody - And I "know" Nothing.

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

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.

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.

Giving Is The Highest Expression Of Potency.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 .

I Am Convinced That Boredom Is One Of The Greatest Tortures. If I Were To Imagine Hell, It Would Be The Place Where You Were Continually Bored.

The Kind Of Relatedness To The World May Be Noble Or Trivial, But Even Being Related To The Basest Kind Of Pattern Is Immensely Preferable To Being Alone.

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

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.

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

We Are Terribly Imaginative, As Far As Technique In Science Is Concerned. As Far As Changes In Social Arrangements Are Concerned, We Lack Utterly In Imagination.

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

Frame Of Reference

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.

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

If We Begin To Say, "well, Maybe We Can Cope Better With The Russians If We Also Transform Ourselves Into A Managed Society, If We, As Somebody Put It The Other Day, Train Our Soldiers To Be Like The Turks, Who Have Fought So Bravely In Korea, If We Are Willing To Change Our Whole Way Of Life For The Sake Of So-called "survival," Then I Think We Do Exactly That Which Threatens Our Survival.

Women Are Equal Because They Are Not Different Any More.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

Freedom Is Not A Constant Attribute Which We Either "have" Or "have Not." In Fact, There Is No Such Thing As "freedom" Except As A Word And An Abstract Concept. There Is Only One Reality: The Act Of Freeing Ourselves In The Process Of Making Choices. In This Process The Degree Of Our Capacity To Make Choices Varies With Each Act, With Our Practice Of Life.

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

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

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.

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.

When An Individual Is Awake, Almost All He Does And Says Is Inspired By The Model Of Behavior That The Society Imposes,even Without His Being Aware Of It.

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

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

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

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

Trending Author

Maureen Forrester

Category