Erich Fromm Quotes

221 Sourced Quotes

I believe that the nature of man is a contradiction rooted in the conditions of human existence that requires a search for solutions, which in their turn create new contradictions and now the need for answers.
I believe that every answer to these contradictions can really satisfy the condition of helping man to overcome the sense of separation and to achieve a sense of agreement, of unity, and of belonging.
I believe that in every answer to these contradictions, man has the possibility of choosing only between going forward or going back; these choices, which are translated into specific actions, are means toward the regressing or toward the progressing of the humanity that is in us.

Erich Fromm
People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love - or to be loved by - is difficult.

Erich Fromm
Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions.

Erich Fromm
The same polarity of the male and female principle exists in nature; not only, as is obvious in animals and plants, but in the polarity of the two fundamental functions, that of receiving and penetrating. It is the polarity of earth and rain, of the river and the ocean, of night and day, of darkness and light, of matter and spirit.

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

Erich Fromm
Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one's identity, in the many ways in which such violation is possible.

Erich Fromm
In the development of both capitalism and communism, as we visualize them in the next fifty or a hundred years, the processes that encourage human alienation will continue.

Erich Fromm
It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas and feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consensual validation as such has no bearing on reason or mental health.

Erich Fromm
Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness. Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his individuality and uniqueness. To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibilty would be blind if they were not guided by the knowledge of the person's individuality.

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
There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.

Erich Fromm
There is nothing of which we are more ashamed than of not being ourselves. And there is nothing which brings us greater joy and happiness than to think, feel, and say what is ours.

Erich Fromm
Man unites himself with the world in the process of creation.

Erich Fromm
Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.

Erich Fromm
Critical and radical thought will only bear fruit when it is blended with the most precious quality man is endowed with — the love of life.

Erich Fromm
Mother is the home we come from.
She is nature, soil, ocean.

Erich Fromm
FORTITUDE IS THE CAPACITY TO SAY NO WHEN THE WORLD WANTS TO HEAR 'YES'

Erich Fromm
The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self.

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

Erich Fromm
In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.

Erich Fromm
We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced — by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.

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
There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.

Erich Fromm
Man's nature, his passions and anxieties, are a cultural product; as a matter of fact, man himself is the most important creation and achievement of the continuous human effort, the record of what we call history.

Erich Fromm
We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent - people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.

Erich Fromm