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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.

-Erich Fromm

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Man Is The Only

Erich Fromm

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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.

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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.

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Capacity To Love

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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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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.

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Love Is A Power Which Produces Love.

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Unimportant Things

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

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

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Brave New World

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

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To Be Concentrated Means To Live Fully In The Present.

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

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Man Is The Only Animal That Can Be Bored.

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.

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

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.

[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.

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

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.

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

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

To Be Loved Because Of One's Merit, Because One Deserves It, Always Leaves Doubt; Maybe I Did Not Please The Person Whom I Want To Love Me, Maybe This, Or That - There Is Always A Fear That Love Could Disappear.

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.

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.

Suffering Of Others

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.

There Is Perhaps No Phenomenon Which Contains So Much Destructive Feeling As Moral Indignation, Which Permits Envy Or To Be Acted Out Under The Guise Of Virtue.

The 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.

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

I Believe That One Can And Must Hope For A Sane Society That Furthers Man's Capacity To Love His Fellow Men, To Work And Create, To Develop His Reason And His Objectivity Of A Sense Of Himself That Is Based On The Experience Of His Productive Energy. I Believe That One Can And Must Hope For The Collective Regaining Of A Mental Health That Is Characterized By The Capacity To Love And To Create.

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

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.

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.

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

I Need You Because I Love You.

I Think If You Ask People What Their Concept Of Heaven Is, They Would Say, If They Are Honest, That It Is A Big Department Store, With New Things Every Week - All The Money To Buy Them, And Maybe A Little More Than The Neighbours.

Love Is 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.

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.

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

Falling In Love

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

Optimism Is An Alienated Form Of Faith, Pessimism An Alienated Form Of Despair. If One Truly Responds To Man And His Future, Ie , Concernedly And "responsibly." One Can Respond Only By Faith Or By Despair. Rational Faith As Well As Rational Despair Are Based On The Most Thorough, Critical Knowledge Of All The Factors That Are Relevant For The Survival Of Man.

The 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 .

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

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.

Psychoanalysis Is Essentially A Theory Of Unconscious Strivings, Of Resistance, Of Falsification Of Reality According To One's Subjective Needs And Expectations.

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

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.

To Hope Means To Be Ready At Every Moment For That Which Is Not Yet Born, And Yet Not Become Desperate If There Is No Birth In Our Lifetime.

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

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.

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

The Sick Individual Finds Himself At Home With All Other Similarly Sick Individuals. The Whole Culture Is Geared To This Kind Of Pathology. The Result Is That The Average Individual Does Not Experience The Separateness And Isolation The Fully Schizophrenic Person Feels. He Feels At Ease Among Those Who Suffer From The Same Deformation; In Fact, It Is The Fully Sane Person Who Feels Isolated In The Insane Society - And He May Suffer So Much From The Incapacity To Communicate That It Is He Who May Become Psychotic.

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.

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.

You Have To Stop In Order To Change Direction.

Every Society By Its Own Practice Of Living And By The Mode Of Relatedness, Of Feelings, And Perceiving, Develops A System Of Categories Which Determines The Forms Of Awareness.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Nonviolent Communication

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?

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.

Destructiveness Is The Outcome Of An Unlived Life.

Destructiveness

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

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.

I Would Say That Love Today Is A Relatively Rare Phenomenon, That We Have A Great Deal Of Sentimentality; We Have A Great Deal Of Illusion About Love, Namely As A... As Something One Falls In.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Frame Of Reference

Paradoxically, The Ability To Be Alone Is The Condition For The Ability To Love.

Ability To Love

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

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.

I Believe That None Can "save" His Fellow Man By Making A Choice For Him. To Help Him, He Can Indicate The Possible Alternatives, With Sincerity And Love, Without Being Sentimental And Without Illusion.

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.

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.

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

Integrity Simply Means Not Violating One's Own Identity.

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.

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.

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.

We Must Make A Decision Of Values.

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

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

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.

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.

For [karl] Marx What Counts Is Man. He Is The Root Of Everything;while For Capitalism, The Aim Are Things, Profit, And Man Is Only A Means To Gain Them. As An Authentically Religious Individual, Marx Could Not Be Other Than Against "religion".

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

Freedom Does Not Mean License.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

In The Development Of Both Capitalism And Communism, As We Visualize Them In The Next Fifty Or A Hundred Years, The Processes That Encourage Human Alienation Will Continue.

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.

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.

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.

Education Is Helping The Child Realise His Potentialities.

The Danger Of The Past Was That Men Became Slaves. The Danger Of The Future Is That Man May Become Robots.

Giving Is The Highest Expression Of Potency.

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.

I Have Learnt To Appreciate The Clarity Of English Language.

If There Is No Evidence That Sport Lowers Aggression, At The Same Time It Should Be Said That There Is Also No Evidence That Sport Is Motivated By Aggression.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

In Times Of Change, Learners Inherit The Earth

Times Have Changed

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

Man Absolutely Cannot Live By Himself.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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Willem De Kooning

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