"Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either."

Experience

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Thematic Reflection

This quotation examines the core nature of Experience as articulated by Erich Fromm. Within historical and literary traditions, reflections on Experience provide actionable mental models, challenging individuals to evaluate personal ethics, self-discipline, and daily actions.

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About Erich Fromm

Erich Seligmann Fromm was a German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the United States. He was one of the founders of The William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology in New York City and was associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory.

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More by Erich Fromm

"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers."

— Erich Fromm
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"The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal."

— Erich Fromm
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"There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started out with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which fails so regularly, as love."

— Erich Fromm
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"Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?"

— Erich Fromm
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More about Experience

"I wouldn't say when you've seen one Western you've seen the lot; but when you've seen the lot you get the feeling you've seen one."

— Katharine Whitehorn
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"'Fresh Air' I listen to, like, every day."

— Gillian Jacobs
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"Women find men attractive who are aggressive... but later on, they get worried that that aggression, that alpha energy, is going to be turned back against them and their children."

— Bryan Callen
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"No place epitomizes the American experience and the American spirit more than New York City."

— Michael Bloomberg
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