Erich Fromm Quotes

221 Sourced Quotes

In the first World War British propaganda had to invent the stories of German soldiers bayoneting Belgian babies, because there were too few real atrocities to feed the hatred against the enemy.

Erich Fromm
Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians; people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in
themselves.

Erich Fromm
The most important factor for the development of the individual is the structure and the values of the society into which he was born.

Erich Fromm
All genuine ideals have one thing in common: they express the desire for something which is not yet accomplished but which is desirable for the purpose of the growth and happiness of the individual.

Erich Fromm
Man can be conditioned to behave in almost every desired way; but only "almost.

Erich Fromm
The aim of life is to be fully born, though its tragedy is that most of us die before we are thus born.

Erich Fromm
Modern man's happiness consists in the thrill of looking at the shop windows, and in buying all that he can afford to buy, either for cash or on installments.

Erich Fromm
Modern man, if he dared to be articulate about his concept of heaven, would describe a vision which would look like the biggest department store in the world, showing new things and gadgets, and himself having plenty of money with which to buy them.

Erich Fromm
When people can see a vision and simultaneously recognize what can be done step by step in a concrete way to achieve it, they will begin to feel encouragement and enthusiasm instead of fright.

Erich Fromm
A new question has arisen in modern man's mind, the question, namely, whether life is worth living...No sensible answer can be given to the question...because the question does not make any sense.

Erich Fromm
We are not on the way to greater individualism, but are becoming an increasingly manipulated mass civilization.

Erich Fromm
There is undoubtedly a difference between people who manipulate other people and people who create things.

Erich Fromm
The right to express our thoughts means something only if we are able to have thoughts of our own

Erich Fromm
Even the most sadistic and destructive man is human, as human as the saint.

Erich Fromm
Erotic love begins with separateness, and ends in oneness. Motherly love begins with oneness, and leads to separateness.

Erich Fromm
Many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of 'unadjusted' individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself.

Erich Fromm
The need for the creation of collective art and ritual on a nonclerical basis is at least as important as literacy and higher education.

Erich Fromm
While every human being has a capacity for love, its realization is one of the most difficult achievements.

Erich Fromm
Death is never sweet, not even if it is suffered for the highest ideal.

Erich Fromm
When blended with sexuality, the death instinct is transformed into more harmless impulses expressed in sadism or masochism.

Erich Fromm
Knowing means to penetrate through the surface, in order to arrive at the roots, and hence the causes; knowing means to "see" reality in its nakedness. Knowing does not mean to be in the possession of the truth; it means to penetrate the surface and to strive critically and actively in order to approach truth ever more closely.

Erich Fromm
If there is no evidence that sport lowers aggression, at the same time it should be said that there is also no evidence that sport is motivated by aggression.

Erich Fromm
Man, the more he gains freedom in the sense of emerging from the original oneness with man and nature and the more he becomes an "individual," has no choice but to unite himself with the world in the spontaneity of love and productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the world as destroy his freedom and the integrity of his individual self.

Erich Fromm
The activity at this very moment must be the only thing that matters, to which one is fully given. If one is concentrated, it matters little what one is doing. The important, as well as the unimportant things, assume a new dimension of reality, because they have one's full attention.

Erich Fromm
Sleep is often the only occasion in which man cannot silence his conscience; we forget what we knew in our dream.

Erich Fromm