Erich Fromm Quotes

I don't know the difference between what I want and what I'm trained to want.

Societies have been conditioned to believe that entertainers are just that, but I refuse to be put into the box of a puppet.

People are so brainwashed by the rules that they don't know what really matters.

No, it's not that they're bad. It's that they're obliged to pretend they're good. They've been brought up to deceive and be cunning, to protect themselves from our society. I don't want to be like that.

You feel very much like a puppet, but it had been what I was accustomed to - so you just get on with it and try to find something that rings true.

The ego does not, cannot live in the present, because the present is real and the ego is false - they never meet.

It is not the repeated mistakes, the long succession of petty betrayals--though, God knows, they would give cause enough for anxiety and self-contempt--but the huge elementary mistake, the betrayal of that within me which is greater than I--in complacent adjustment to alien demands.

The more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him.

Only the tiniest fracton of mankind want freedom. All the rest want someone to tell them theyare free.

I mean, the more a man was in the Devil's power, the less he would be aware of it, on the principle that a man is still fairly sober as long as he knows he's drunk.

They Want You To Be A Docile Apathetic Consumer

Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of ones own resources.

The ideal is to create a completely fragmented atomized society where everybody is totally alone, doing nothing but trying to pursue created wants, and the wants are created.

Therefore, in the nature of this will for freedom, which freedom itself implies, I may pass judgement on those who seek to hide from themselves the complete arbitrariness and the complete freedom of their existence.

Don't lose who you are in the blur of the stars Seeing is deceiving, dreaming is believing

Savor what you are and not what everyone else wants you to be.

I don't want people to be inspired or offended by what I do. If you determine your behavior by what [other people] want, you're screwed.

It's mind control, see. You have to go to school, get those exams, get to university or college, get a job, get married, don't miss the boat, do it now or you'll shoot your life down the drain. Yeah. They got you as soon as you were born. They never risked a second of your life. When you have kids they'll be telling them they have to wear a plastic mask and put a penny in the slot about their nose before they can breathe in.

To the generality of men you cannot give a stronger hint for them to impose upon you than by imposing upon yourself.

Most of your desires are not really about yourself. You just picked them up from your social surroundings.

Don't you know girls have to fool people every day of their lives if they want to get anywhere?

You're always learning about yourself, if you're honest with yourself. It's very tough to be honest with yourself. We all are dishonest with ourselves, a lot of the time. We don't want to deal with something, so we compartmentalize it.

I hope I can pass on a few thoughts and ideas to the Sci-Fi channel to encourage people to see that they are living in a conditioned illusion and we can change it any time we want. We can be people and not sheeple.

No one can manipulate anyone else. In any relationship, both parties know what they're doing. even if one complains later on that they were used.

Can we ever break free of the devices and desires of our own hearts? Might not our conscience be telling us what we most want to hear?