Erich Fromm Quotes

#1. The conditions for creativity are: To be puzzled, to concentrate, To accept conflict and tension, To be born every day, And to feel a sense of self." Erich Fromm

James Seals

#2. Erich Fromm, a German-American psychologist and author, reminds us that people never think their way into new ways of acting, they always act their way into new ways of thinking.

John Shelby Spong

#3. Psychologist Erich Fromm coined the term ["biophilia"] in 1964 as a way of describing the innate attraction to processes of life and growth.

Adam Leith Gollner

#4. If i am what i have, and i lose what i have, who then am i?

Erich Fromm

#5. At the very moment when man is on the verge of realizing his hope, he begins to lose it.

Erich Fromm

#6. Man can never stand still. He must find solutions to this contradiction, and ever better solutions to the extent to which reality enables him.

Erich Fromm

#7. Pleasure and thrill are conducive to sadness after the so-called peak has
been reached; for the thrill has been experienced, but the vessel has not
grown.

Erich Fromm

#8. A vast sector of modern advertising ... does not appeal to reason but to emotion; like any other kind of hypnoid suggestion, it tries to impress its objects emotionally and then make them submit intellectually.

Erich Fromm

#9. Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.

Erich Fromm

#10. FORTITUDE IS THE CAPACITY TO SAY NO WHEN THE WORLD WANTS TO HEAR 'YES'

Erich Fromm

#11. We are what we do.

Erich Fromm

#12. [T}he sexual act without love never bridges the gap between two human beings, except momentarily.

Erich Fromm

#13. Man can only know the nagation, never the position of ultimate reality.

Erich Fromm

#14. Not only thinking and feeling are determined by man's character structure but also his actions.

Erich Fromm

#15. Reality imposes its law on man, laws that he can only escape in dreams or in states of trance - or in insanity.

Erich Fromm

#16. Rationalizing is not a tool for penetration of reality but a post-factum attempt to harmonize one's own wishes with existing reality.

Erich Fromm

#17. 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

#18. The duty to be alive is the same as the duty to become oneself, to develop into the individual one potentially is.

Erich Fromm

#19. Modern capitalism needs men who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated ... what is the outcome? Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow man and from nature.

Erich Fromm

#20. [W]hat a person considers the minimal necessities depends as much on his character as it depends on his actual possessions.

Erich Fromm

#21. If it is a virtue to love my neighbor as a human being, it must be a virtue - and not a vice - to love myself, since I am a human being too.

Erich Fromm

#22. 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

#23. It is a tragedy that most of us die before we have begun to live.

Erich Fromm

#24. Power on the one side, fear on the other, are always the buttresses on which irrational authority is built.

Erich Fromm

#25. Friendliness, cheerfulness, and everything that a smile is supposed to express, become automatic responses which one turns on and off like an electric switch.

Erich Fromm

#26. Exclusive love is a contradiction in itself.

Erich Fromm

#27. Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be. Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar, and you'll live as you've never lived before.

Erich Fromm

#28. The paradoxical situation with a vast number of people today is that they are half asleep when awake, and half awake when asleep, or when they want to sleep.

Erich Fromm

#29. Neurosis can be understood best as the battle between tendencies within an individual; deep character analysis leads, if successful, to the progressive solution.

Erich Fromm

#30. As we ascend the social ladder, viciousness wears a thicker mask.

Erich Fromm

#31. since men are equal and thus have the same wish for happiness, and since there is not enough wealth to satisfy them all to the same extent, they necessarily fight against each other and want power to secure the future enjoyment of what they have at present.

Erich Fromm

#32. Love is active penetration of the other person, in which my desire to know is stilled by union. In the act of fusion I know you, I know myself, I know everybody - and I "know" nothing.

Erich Fromm

#33. Respect is not fear and awe; it ... [is]the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.

Erich Fromm

#34. It is time to cease to argue about God , and instead to unite in the unmasking of contemporary forms of idolatry.

Erich Fromm

#35. People seek a new orientation, a new philosophy, one which is centered on the priorities of life-physically and spiritually-and not on the priorities of death.

Erich Fromm

#36. It is desirable to avoid trivial and evil company altogether - unless one can assert oneself fully, and thus make the other doubt his own position.

Erich Fromm

#37. The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent.

Erich Fromm

#38. Not that people think that love is not important. They are starved for it; they watch endless numbers of films about happy and unhappy love stories, they listen to hundreds of trashy songs about love - yet hardly anyone thinks that there is anything that needs to be learned about love. This

Erich Fromm

#39. To be concentrated means to live fully in the present.

Erich Fromm

#40. For centuries kings, priests, feudal lords, industrial bosses and parents have insisted that obedience is a virtue and that disobedience is a vice.

Erich Fromm

#41. The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity.

Erich Fromm

#42. Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a "standing in," not a "falling for." In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.

Erich Fromm

#43. If we love our fellow humans, we cannot limit our insight and our love only to others as individuals ... We have to be political people, I would even say passionately involved political people, each of us in the way that best suits our own temperaments, our working lives, and our own capabilities.

Erich Fromm

#44. Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.

Erich Fromm

#45. The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.

Erich Fromm

#46. Nature is the great power we have to submit to, but living beings are the ones we should dominate.

Erich Fromm

#47. An illusion shared by everyone becomes a reality.

Erich Fromm

#48. A third way of attaining union lies in creative activity, be it that of the artist, or of the artisan. In any kind of creative work the creating person unites himself with his material, which represents the world outside

Erich Fromm

#49. We are not only less reasonable and less decent in our dreams ... we are also more inteligent, wiser and capable of better judgment when we are asleep than when we are awake.

Erich Fromm

#50. One can hardly overestimate people's need to talk about themselves and to be listened to.

Erich Fromm

#51. Authority is not a quality one person 'has', in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him.

Erich Fromm

#52. The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die - although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born.

Erich Fromm

#53. Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.

Erich Fromm

#54. Reason flows from the blending of rational thought and feeling. If the two functions are torn apart, thinking deteriorates into schizoid intellectual activity and feeling deteriorates into neurotic life-damaging passions.

Erich Fromm

#55. Sanity is only that which is within the frame of reference of conventional thought.

Erich Fromm

#56. The only way of full knowledge lies in the act of love; this act transcends thought, it transcends words. It is the daring plunge into the experience of union.

Erich Fromm

#57. The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.

Erich Fromm

#58. How should a man caught in this net of routine not forget that he is a man, a unique individual, one who is given only this one chance of living, with hopes and disappointments, with sorrow and fear, with the longing for love and the dread of the nothing and of separateness?

Erich Fromm

#59. To some people return to religion is the answer, not as an act of faith but in order to escape an intolerable doubt; they make this decision not out of devotion but in search of security.

Erich Fromm

#60. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me. If

Erich Fromm

#61. 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

#62. The existential split in man would be unbearable could he not establish a sense of unity within himself and with the natural and human world outside.

Erich Fromm

#63. Having lost religious faith and the humanistic values bound up with it, he [man] concentrated on technical and material values and lost the capacity for deep emotional experiences, for the joy and sadness that accompany them.

Erich Fromm

#64. Independent of others and in concert with others, your main task in life is to do what you can best do and become what you can potentially be.

Erich Fromm

#65. To transcend nature, to be alienated from nature and from another human being, finds man naked, ashamed. He is alone and free, yet powerless and afraid.

Erich Fromm

#66. The frightened individual seeks for somebody or something to tie his self
to; he cannot bear to be his own individual self any longer,
and he tries frantically to get rid of it and to feel security again by the elimination of this burden:
the self.

Erich Fromm

#67. 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

#68. To feel completely alone and isolated leads to mental disintegration just as physical starvation leads to death.

Erich Fromm

#69. If one is not productive in other spheres, one is not productive in the love either.

Erich Fromm

#70. What is it that distinguishes man from animals? It is not his upright posture.

Erich Fromm

#71. The intensity and excitement which accompanies moments of infatuation is frequently relative to the degree of loneliness and isolation which has been previously experienced.

Erich Fromm

#72. The deepest need of the human being is to overcome our
separateness, to leave the prison of our loneliness.

Erich Fromm

#73. But man is not only made by history - history is made by man.

Erich Fromm

#74. As long as one was an integral part of that world, unaware of the possibilities and responsibilities of individual action, one did not need to be afraid of it. When one has become an individual , one stands alone and faces the world in all its perilous and overpowering aspects.

Erich Fromm

#75. The more man understands and masters nature the less he needs to use religion as a scientific explanation and as a magical device for controlling nature.

Erich Fromm

#76. One discovers answers to problems only when one feels that they are burning and that it is a a matter of life and death to solve them. Is nothing is of burning interest, one's reason and one's critical faculty operate on a low level of activity; it appears then that one lacks the faculty to observe.

Erich Fromm

#77. 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

#78. Happiness is a man's greatest achievement; it is the response of his total personality to a productive orientation toward himself and the world outside.

Erich Fromm

#79. To be naive and easily deceived is impermissible, today more than ever, when the prevailing untruths may lead to a catastrophe because they blind people to real dangers and real possibilities.

Erich Fromm

#80. Human history began as an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience. At this point in history the capacity to doubt, to criticize and to disobey may be all that stands between a future for mankind and the end of civilization.

Erich Fromm

#81. Education makes machines which act like men and produces men who act like machines.

Erich Fromm

#82. The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.

Erich Fromm

#83. Chronic boredom compensated or uncompensated constitutes one of the major psychopathological phenomena in contemporary technotronic society, although it is only recently that it has found some recognition.

Erich Fromm

#84. Even the most sadistic and destructive man is human, as human as the saint.

Erich Fromm

#85. Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.

Erich Fromm

#86. Only in being productively active can man make sense of his life.

Erich Fromm

#87. Human nature, though being the product of historical evolution, has certain inherent mechanisms and laws, to discover which is the task of psychology.

Erich Fromm

#88. The value judgments we make determine our actions, and upon their validity rests our mental health and happiness.

Erich Fromm

#89. We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.

Erich Fromm

#90. The right to express out thoughts, however, means something only if we are able to have thoughts of our own; freedom from external authority is a lasting gain only if the inner psychological conditions are such that we are able to establish our own individuality.

Erich Fromm

#91. I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself.

Erich Fromm

#92. Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.

Erich Fromm

#93. The customer is an object to be manipulated, not a concrete person whose aims the businessman is interested to satisfy.

Erich Fromm

#94. Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

Erich Fromm

#95. 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

#96. The supreme principle of socialism is that man takes precedence over things, life over property, and hence, work over capital; that power follows creation, and not possession; that man must not be governed by circumstances, but circumstances must be governed by man.

Erich Fromm

#97. Modern man thinks he loses something - time - when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains, except kill it.

Erich Fromm

#98. We have faith in the potentialities of others, of ourselves, and of mankind because, and only to the degree to which, we have experienced the growth of our own potentialities, the reality of growth in ourselves, the strength of our own power of reason and love.

Erich Fromm

#99. Creativity is the ability to see and to respond.

Erich Fromm

#100. Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness.

Erich Fromm