“Yet another explanation for the deadening of our survival is that the changes in living that would be required are so drastic that people prefer the future catastrophe to the sacrifice they would have to make it now.”
“If I am what I have and if what I have is lost, who then am I? Nobody but a defeated, deflated, pathetic testimony to a wrong way of living.”
“Our conscious motivations, ideas and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalisations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking processes attempt to organise this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of plausibility. This level of consciousness is supposed to reflect reality; it is the map we use for organising our life.”
“Those who unconsciously despair yet put on the mask of optimism are not necessarily wise. But those who have not given up hope can succeed only if they are hard headed realists, shed all illusions, and fully appreciate the difficulties.”
– Erich Fromm, “To Have or to Be?” (1976)
