Society, and the family as its psycho social agent, has to solve a difficult problem: How to break a person's will without his being aware of it? Yet by a complicated process of indoctrination, rewards, punishments, and fitting ideology, it solves this task by and large so well that most people believe they are following their own will and are unaware that their will itself is conditioned and manipulated.
Erich FrommIf 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.
Erich FrommBasically, 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.
Erich FrommLove is hot a higher power which descends upon mn nor a duty which is imposed upon him; it is his own power by which he relates himself to the world and makes it truly his.
Erich FrommI 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.
Erich Fromm