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« Individual initiative was a powerful leaven for the economy and personal development in the days of liberal capitalism. But it has two aspects: it promotes only the chosen qualities of man, his will and his efficiency, while leaving him in the grip of the economic Minotaur. It was a principle that worked best during the individual phase of the competition (...). Today, retail, crafts and small industry are shrinking every day like the skin of sorrow. Only a minority can still show initiative. »
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Erich Fromm
Fear of freedom |
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Erich Fromm
Fear of freedom
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« Society, and its psycho-social agent, the family, have to solve a difficult problem: how to break a person's will without them realizing it? And yet, through a complicated process of indoctrination, rewards, punishment and adequate ideology, society (and the family), on the whole, is so well aware of this task that most individuals believe they are following their own will without realizing that it is itself conditioned and manipulated. »
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Erich Fromm
Have or be |
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Erich Fromm
Have or be
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« Being selfish means that I want to have everything; that owning, not sharing, gives me pleasure; that I must become greedy because my only goal is to have: the more I have the more I am; that I must feel hostile towards all others: my clients whom I must deceive, my competitors whom I wish to eliminate, my workers whom I want to exploit. I can never be satisfied because my desires are endless; I must envy those who have more than me and be afraid of those who have less. »
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Erich Fromm
Have or be |
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Erich Fromm
Have or be
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