Quote #61

I believe that freedom is not a constant attribute that 'we have' or 'we don't have'; perhaps there is only one reality: the act of liberating ourselves in the process of using choices. Every step in life that heightens the maturity of man heightens his ability to choose the freeing alternative. I believe that 'freedom of choice' is not always equal for all men at every moment. The man with an exclusively necrophilic orientation; who is narcissistic; or who is symbiotic-incestuous, can only make a regressive choice. The free man, freed from irrational ties, can no longer make a regressive choice.

More from Erich Fromm

  1. I believe that love is the main key to open the doors to the 'growth' of man. Love and union with someone or something outside of oneself, …
  2. 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 sinc…
  3. I believe that the man choosing progress can find a new unity through the full development of all his human forces, which are produced in t…
  4. 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 developmen…
  5. By incestuous symbiosis is meant the tendency to stay tied to the mother and to her equivalents - blood, family, tribe - to fly from the un…
  6. 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…
  7. By narcissism is meant ceasing to have an authentic interest in the outside world but instead an intense attachment to oneself, to one's ow…
  8. I believe in the possible realization of a world in which man can be much, even if he has little; a world in which the dominant motivation …

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