A Quote by Erich Fromm
Power on the one side, fear on the other, are always the buttresses on which irrational authority is built.
Related Quotes
There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic.
Authority and power are two different things: power is the force by means of which you can oblige others to obey you. Authority is the right to direct and command, to be listened to or obeyed by others. Authority requests power. Power without authority is tyranny.
Self-Control is the very essence of character. To be able to look a man straight in the eye, calmly and deliberately, without the slightest ruffle of temper under extreme provocation, gives a sense of power which nothing else can give. To feel that you are always, not sometimes, master of yourself, gives a dignity and strength to character, buttresses it, supports it on every side, as nothing else can. This is the culmination of thought mastery.
There is a great difference, then, between "power" and "authority." Power refers to one's ability to coerce others (through physical, economic, or other means) to do one's bidding. One can possess the means of power: physical strength, armaments, and money. But authority must be performed. Authority refers to one's ability to gain the trust and willing obedience of others. While power rests on intimidation, authority survives through inspiration.
Attempting to do anything you haven't done before is always uncomfortable, and usually scary, but it is ALWAYS worth it. Fear disappears in the midst of action, and a better version of yourself awaits you on the other side of your fear. Feel the fear, and do it anyway.
Diana Rigg is built like a brick mausoleum with insufficient flying buttresses.
I've always had an irrational fear - it's really not an irrational fear, I think - whenever I've been standing at a urinal at a bar, or Giants Stadium or Yankee Stadium. You've got a bunch of drunks behind you, often in a hostile, adrenalized environment like a football game. What's to prevent the guy behind me from slamming my head into the porcelain wall in front of me?
There are two kinds of power. One is power over, which is always destructive, and the other is power from within, which is a transcendent and creative power.
The persecution of the innovator and protestant has always been inspired by fear on the part of constituted authority of having its infallibility questioned and its power undermined.
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.
Nothing could be more irrational than to give the people power, and to withhold from them information without which power is abused.
Why do people do things that they fear? It may be that the fear contains information. Something can be interesting if you get to the other side of that fear.
In a nutshell-I fear authority but at the same time I resent it-the authority and my own fear. So I rebel.
In a culture of technique, we often confuse authority with power, but the two are not the same. Power works from the outside in, but authority works from the inside out. . . . I am painfully aware of the times in my own teaching when I lose touch with my inner teacher and therefore with my own authority. In those times I try to gain power by barricading myself behind the podium and my status while wielding the threat of grades. . . . Authority comes as I reclaim my identity and integrity, remembering my selfhood and my sense of vocation.
Coupling doesn't always have to do with sex ... Two people holding each other up like flying buttresses. Two people depending on each other and babying each other and defending each other against the world outside. Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world.
Once, when I was playing a nude scene in an indifferent play in New York, a critic wrote, 'Diana Rigg is built like a brick basilica with too few flying buttresses.' Do you think that's fair?
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