Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Meandering in thought . . .

Today is the birthday of Erich Seligmann Fromm (March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980), social psychologist, psychoanalyst, and humanistic philosopher.

"Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much."
Erich Fromm

"Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total… Man has created a world of man-made things as it never existed before. He has constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine he built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces are which he unleashes, the more powerless he feels himself as a human being. He is owned by his creations, and has lost ownership of himself."
Erich Fromm

". . . freedom to create and construct, to wonder and to venture. Such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible, not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine . . . It is not enough that men are not slaves; if social conditions further the existence of automatons, the result will not be love of life, but love of death."
Erich Fromm

"Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you."
Erich Fromm

"The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have."
Erich Fromm

Fromm image source (1)

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