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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.

-Erich Fromm

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We May Know Ourselves,

Erich Fromm

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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.

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What Most People In Our Culture Mean By Being Lovable Is Essentially A Mixture Between Being Popular And Having Sex Appeal.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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?"

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Man Is The Only Animal That Can Be Bored.

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.

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.

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

We Must Make A Decision Of Values.

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.

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.

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'.

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.

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.

Hate Is A Product Of The Unfulfilled Life.

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 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.

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 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.

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

Capacity To Love

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

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.

I Believe Indeed That To Rescue The Humanist Tradition Of The Last Decades Is Of The Utmost Importance, And That Victor Serge Is One Of The Outstanding Personalities Representing The Socialist Aspect Of Humanism.

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.

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

Frame Of Reference

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.

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

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

The Customer Is An Object To Be Manipulated, Not A Concrete Person Whose Aims The Businessman Is Interested To Satisfy.

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.

In His Condemnation [karl] Marx Referred To Institutionalized Religion,that Has Precisely The Function Of Anesthetizing Men Till They Do Not Notice The In- Justice Of Which They Are The Perpetrators And The Victims.

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

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.

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'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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 .

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

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

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

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.

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

In Times Of Change, Learners Inherit The Earth

Times Have Changed

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

People Think That To Love Is Simple, But That To Find The Right Object To Love - Or To Be Loved By - Is Difficult.

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

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

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

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.

Man Is Born As A Freak Of Nature, Being Within Nature And Yet Transcending It. He Has To Find Principles Of Action And Decision-making Which Replace The Principles Of Instincts.

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.

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

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.

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.

[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.

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

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

But Not Only Medicine, Engineering, And Painting Are Arts; Living Itself Is An Art In Fact, The Most Important And At The Same Time The Most Difficult And Complex Art To Be Practiced By Man.

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

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.

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.

Man Absolutely Cannot Live By Himself.

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.

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

An Illusion Shared By Everyone Becomes A Reality.

Ger-mans Love The Ambiguous Word, Verbal Assonances As Ends In Themselves,vague Concepts. Anglosaxons Are More Clear.

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.

The Only Concern Which I Have Today Is That We Have A Policy, A Foreign Policy, Which Enables Us To Avoid A Catastrophe; Which, If One Understands It Properly, Is Indescribable.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Meaning Of Life

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

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

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

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

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

[carl Gustav] Jung Was Not Right When He Said That The Unconscious Message Is Always Written Clearly And So There Is No Need To Seek To Discover The Distortions, Because One Must Recognize That Many Dreams Are More Or Less Distortions.

If A Person Loves Only One Other Person And Is Indifferent To All Others, His Love Is Not Love But A Symbiotic Attachment, Or An Enlarged Egotism.

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

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.

Modern Man's Happiness Consists In The Thrill Of Looking At The Shop Windows, And In Buying All That He Can Afford To Buy, Either For Cash Or On Installments.

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.

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.

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.

Love Is An Act Of Faith.

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 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.

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

I Believe That The Experience Of Love Is The Most Human And Humanizing Act That It Is Given To Man To Enjoy And That It, Like Reason, Makes No Sense If Conceived In A Partial Way.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

The Pleasure In Complete Domination Over Another Person (or Other Animate Creature) Is The Very Essence Of The Sadistic Drive. Another Way Of Formulating The Same Thought Is To Say That The Aim Of Sadism Is To Transform Man Into A Thing, Something Animate Into Something Inanimate, Since By Complete And Absolute Control The Living Loses One Essential Quality Of Life - Freedom.

The Whole Life Of The Individual Is Nothing But The Process Of Giving Birth To Himself; Indeed, We Should Be Fully Born When We Die.

Power On The One Side, Fear On The Other, Are Always The Buttresses On Which Irrational Authority Is Built.

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.

Exclusive Love Is A Contradiction In Itself.

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

If You Want A Big Brother, You Get All That Comes With It.

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 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.

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.

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

I Believe That The Fundamental Alternative For Man Is The Choice Between "life" And "death"; Between Creativity And Destructive Violence; Between Reality And Illusions; Between Objectivity And Intolerance; Between Brotherhood-independence And Dominance-submission.

Freedom Is The Fundamental Condition For Any Growth.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The History Of Man Is A Graveyard Of Great Cultures That Came To Catastrophic Ends Because Of Their Incapacity For Planned, Rational, Voluntary Reaction To Challenge.

Let Your Mind Start A Journey Through A Strange New World. Leave All Thoughts Of The World You Knew Before. Let Your Soul Take You Where You Long To Be. Close Your Eyes, Let Your Spirit Start To Soar, And You’ll Live As You’ve Never Lived Before.

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.

Integrity Simply Means A Willingness Not To Violate One's Identity, In The Many Ways In Which Such Violation Is Possible.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Only The Person Who Has Faith In Himself Is Able To Be Faithful To Others.

Man Always Dies Before He Is Fully Born.

Freedom Does Not Mean License.

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.

[sigmund ] Freud Assumes That Every Dream Represents The Satisfaction Of Adesire And In The Last Analysis, Of A Sexual Desire That Has Its Roots In Infancy.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I Need You Because I Love You.

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.

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.

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.

It Seems That Great Minds A Hundred Years Ago Saw What Would Happen Today Or Tomorrow, While We To Whom It Is Happening Blind Ourselves In Order Not To Be Disturbed In Our Daily Routine.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Destructiveness Is The Outcome Of An Unlived Life.

Destructiveness

The Application Of Psychoanalysis To Sociology Must Definitely Guard Against The Mistake Of Wanting To Give Psychoanalytic Answers Where Economic, Technical, Or Political Facts Provide The Real And Sufficient Explanation Of Sociological Questions. On The Other Hand, The Psychoanalyst Must Emphasize That The Subject Of Sociology, Society, In Reality Consists Of Individuals, And That It Is These Human Beings, Rather Than Abstract Society As Such, Whose Actions, Thoughts, And Feelings Are The Object Of Sociological Research.

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.

Love Is A Power Which Produces Love.

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.

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

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

Ability To Love

...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?

The Russians Have Succeeded In One Thing: They Have Sold The World The Idea That They Represent Socialism And The Ideas Of Marx,and We Have Done The Greatest Service To Their Propaganda By Agreeing That That's What It Is.

The Person Who Gives Up His Individual Self And Becomes An Automaton, Identical With Millions Of Other Automatons Around Him, Need Not Feel Alone And Anxious Any More. But The Price He Pays, However, Is High; It Is The Loss Of His Self.

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.

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

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.

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

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Edna St. Vincent Millay

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