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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.

-Erich Fromm

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[sigmund Freud] Makes The

Erich Fromm

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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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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.

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

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

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.

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?

Man Can Never Stand Still. He Must Find Solutions To This Contradiction, And Ever Better Solutions To The Extent To Which Reality Enables Him.

Education Is Helping The Child Realise His Potentialities.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Conditions For Creativity Are To Be Puzzled; To Concentrate; To Accept Conflict And Tension; To Be Born Everyday; To Feel A Sense Of Self.

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

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

In Our Enthusiasm To Dominate Nature And To Produce More Material Good - Goods - We Have Transformed Means Into Ends.

You Have To Stop To Change Direction.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Modern Man Thinks He Loses Something - Time - When He Does Not Do Things Quickly. Yet He Does Not Know What To Do With The Time He Gains, Except Kill It.

Mother's Love Is Peace. It Need Not Be Acquired, It Need Not Be Deserved.

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.

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.

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

The Fact Is That The Culture Does Not Have Only Positive Effects On Our Intellectual And Moral Functions But Also Negative Effects.

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

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

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

It Is 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.

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

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

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.

I Would Say, Compared With The 19th Century, Compared With Most Previous History, This Is As Good Or Better A Society Than Any Which Man Has Ever Made. But That Doesn't Mean It Is Such A Good One.

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

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

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.

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

Love Is Not Primarily A Relationship To A Specific Person; It Is An Attitude, An Ordination Of Character Which Determines The Relatedness Of The Person To The Whole World As A Whole, Not Toward One Object Of Love

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.

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

Capacity To Love

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Modern Man Lives Under The Illusion That He Knows What He Wants, While He Actually Wants What He Is Supposed To Want.

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 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.

The Destruction Of The World Is The Last, Almost Desperate Attempt To Save Myself From Being Crushed By It

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I Would Say Democracy Once Meant An Organizational Society And A State, In Which The Individual Citizen Is - Feels - Responsible, And Acts Responsibly, And Participates In Decision-making.

Exploitation And Manipulation Produce Boredom And Triviality; They Cripple Man, And All Factors That Make Man Into A Psychic Cripple Turn Him Also Into A Sadist Or A Destroyer.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Fortitude Is The Capacity To Say No When The World Wants To Hear 'yes'

Love Is An Act Of Faith.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

We Are Confronted With The Possibility Of A War Of Such Destruction That The Whole Existence Of Our Nation And Of The Whole World Is At Stake. And Yet, People Know It - People Read It In The Newspapers, People Read That At The First Attack, A Hundred Million Americans Might Be Killed. And Yet, They Talk About It As If They Were Talking About Something Being Wrong With The Carburetor Of Their Car, Perhaps.

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.

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

Destructiveness Is The Outcome Of An Unlived Life.

Destructiveness

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.

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.

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

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.

All Great Art Is By Its Very Essence In Conflict With The Society With Which It Exists. It Expresses The Truth About The Existence Regardless Of Whether This Truth Serves Or Hinders The Survival Purpose Of A Given Society. All Great Art Is Revolutionary Because It Touches Upon The Reality Of Man And Questions The Reality Of The Various Transitory Forms Of Human Society.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

If I Perceive In Another Person Mainly The Surface, I Perceive Mainly The Differences,that Which Separates Us. If I Penetrate To The Core, I Perceive Our Identity, The Fact Of Our Brotherhood. This Relatedness From Center To Center - Instead Of That From Periphery To Periphery - Is 'central Relatedness'.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

We Try To Evade The Question Of Existence With Property, Prestige, Power, Possession, Production, Fun, And, Ultimately, By Trying To Forget That We- That I- Exist. No Matter How Much He Thinks Of God Or Goes To Church, Or How Much He Believes In Religious Ideas , If He, The Whole Man, Is Deaf To The Question Of Existence, If He Does Not Have An Answer To It, He Is Marking Time, And He Lives And Dies Like One Of The Million Things He Produces. He Thinks Of God, Instead Of Experiencing God.

The Activity At This Very Moment Must Be The Only Thing That Matters, To Which One Is Fully Given. If One Is Concentrated, It Matters Little What One Is Doing. The Important, As Well As The Unimportant Things, Assume A New Dimension Of Reality, Because They Have One's Full Attention.

Unimportant Things

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.

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

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

We Have, In The Same Way, Relegated Our Own Responsibility In What Happens To Our Country To The Specialists, Who Are Supposed To Take Care Of It, And The Individual Citizen Does Not Feel That He Can Judge, And Even That He Should Judge, And Take Any Responsibility. I Think There Are Quite A Number Of Recent Developments Which Show That.

I Believe That If An Individual Is Not On The Path To Transcending His Society And Seeing In What Way It Furthers Or Impedes The Development Of Human Potential, He Cannot Enter Into Intimate Contact With His Humanity.

We Must Make A Decision Of Values.

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.

If It Is True, As I Have Tried To Show, That Love Is The Only Sane And Satisfactory Answer To The Problem Of Human Existence, Then Any Society Which Excludes, Relatively, The Development Of Love, Must In The Long Run Perish Of Its Own Contradiction With The Basic Necessities Of Human Nature.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Nonviolent Communication

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

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

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.

While We Teach Knowledge, We Are Losing That Teaching Which Is The Most Important One For Human Development: The Teaching Which Can Only Be Given By The Simple Presence Of A Mature, Loving Person.

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

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.

The Two Most Far-reaching Critical Theories At The Beginning Of The Latest Phase Of Industrial Society Were Those Of Marx And Freud. Marx Showed The Moving Powers And The Conflicts In The Social-historical Process. Freud Aimed At The Critical Uncovering Of The Inner Conflicts. Both Worked For The Liberation Of Man, Even Though Marx's Concept Was More Comprehensive And Less Time-bound Than Freud's.

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

...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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Women Are Equal Because They Are Not Different Any More.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Man Is The Only Animal That Can Be Bored.

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.

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

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.

Creativity Is The Ability To See And To Respond.

Hate Is A Product Of The Unfulfilled Life.

I Think If You Ask What People Really Mean By Happiness Today, It Is The Experience Of Unlimited Consumption - The Kind Of Thing Mr. Huxley Described In "brave New World."

Brave New World

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

Boredom Is Nothing But The Experience Of A Paralysis Of Our Productive Powers And The Sense Of Unaliveness. Among The Evils Of Life, There Are Few Which Are As Painful As Boredom, And Consequently Every Attempt Is Made To Avoid It.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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".

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.

The Narcissistic, The Domineering, The Possessive Woman Can Succeed In Being A "loving" Mother As Long As The Child Is Small. Only The Really Loving Woman, The Woman Who Is Happier In Giving Than In Taking, Who Is Firmly Rooted In Her Own Existence, Can Be A Loving Mother When The Child Is In The Process Of Separation.

Technical Utopias-flying, For Example-have Been Achieved By The New Science Of Nature.the Human Utopia...a United New Humankind Living In Solidarity And Peace, Free From Economic Determination And From War And Class Struggle-can Be Achieved, Provided We Spend The Same Energy, Intelligence, And Enthusiasm On The Realization Of The Human Utopia As We Have Spent On The Realization Of Our Technical Utopias.

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

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.

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.

Love Is A Power Which Produces Love.

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.

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.

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

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.

Beyond The Element Of Giving, The Active Characteristic Of Love Becomes Evident In The Fact That It Always Implies Certain Basic Elements, Common To All Forms Of Love. These Are Care, Responsability, Respect And Knowledge

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Frame Of Reference

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

The More The Drive Toward Life Is Thwarted, The Stronger Is The Drive Toward Destruction; The More Life Is Realized, The Less Is The Strength Of Destructiveness. Destructiveness Is The Outcome Of Unlived Life.

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

Man Always Dies Before He Is Fully Born.

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

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

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 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.

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.

Knowing Means To Penetrate Through The Surface, In Order To Arrive At The Roots, And Hence The Causes; Knowing Means To "see" Reality In Its Nakedness. Knowing Does Not Mean To Be In The Possession Of The Truth; It Means To Penetrate The Surface And To Strive Critically And Actively In Order To Approach Truth Ever More Closely.

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

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.

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.

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.

If Our Supreme Value Is The Development Of The Western Tradition - Of A Man For Whom The Highest Thing In Life Is Man, For Whom Love For Man, Respect For Man, And The Dignity Of Man, Are Supreme Values - Then We Cannot Ask The Question That Says, "if It Is Better For Our Survival, Might We Drop These Values?"

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