Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality. – Erich Fromm
The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man. – Erich Fromm
The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots. – Erich Fromm
The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity. – Erich Fromm
In America everybody is of opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards. – Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays, 1950