Quotes from "Escape from Freedom"

[Verbal Mike]

I'm slowly but surely chewing through Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom and I've encountered some very nice quotes. Makes me think he might have dug BIP.

"Conscience" is a slave driver, put into man by himself. It drives him to act according to wishes and aims which he believes to be his own, while they are actually the internalization of external social demands. It drives him with harshness and cruelty, forbidding him pleasure and happiness, making his whole life the atonement for some mysterious sin.

...we are proud that in his conduct of life man has become free from external authorities, which tell him what to do and what not to do. We neglect the role of the anonymous authorities like public opinion and "common sense," which are so powerful because of our profound readiness to conform to the expectations everybody has about ourselves and our equally profound fear of being different.

[Cain]

Not bad, although both are really a subset of external controls that only become problems when internalized.  I know some Christians, for example, refuse to accept any definition of conscience that is externally derived in its values.