Human history began with an act of disobedience and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.
Interpretation
Human history is characterized by rebellion against authority, and its end may come through submission or adherence to a higher moral law.
Erich Fromm's quote suggests that the essence of human history has been shaped by acts of disobedience, indicating a struggle against oppression and a quest for freedom. However, it also warns that the future of humanity could hinge on obedience, possibly implying that a return to moral values or societal norms might be necessary to ensure survival, thus highlighting the paradox of freedom and order in the human experience.
In practice
This quote could inspire a discussion on the role of civil disobedience in social movements.
Love, experienced thus, is a constant challenge; it is not a resting place, but a moving, growing, working together; even whether there is harmony or conflict; joy or sadness, is secondary to the fundamental fact that two people experience themselves from the essence of their existence, that they are only one with each other by being one with themselves, rather than by fleeing from themselves.
Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.
Infantile love follows the principle: "I love because I am loved." Mature love follows the principle: "I am loved because I love." Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you.
To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern β and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values.
In times of change, learners inherit the earth
In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.
If you don't have the smoking gun, then it's pointless to hector interviewees. Because you just shut people up instead of opening them up.
No single event can awaken within us a stranger whose existence we had never suspected. To live is to be slowly born.
To practice Aikido fully you must calm the spirit and go back to the origin.
The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics.
We go from birth to death. Three out of ten follow life. Three out of ten follow death. People who rush from birth to death are also three out of ten. Why is that so? Because they want to make too much of life.
A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.
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