Simon deVeer

“My friend,” he whispered, “I cannot tell you how to live differently because, if I did, you would still be living another’s design.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept

“Most people are convinced that as long as they are not overtly forced to do something by an outside power, their decisions are theirs, and that if they want something, it is they who want it. But this is one of the great illusions we have about ourselves. A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside; we have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“It seems that nothing is more difficult for the average man to bear than the feeling of not being identified with a larger group.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination. The range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual.”
― Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society