Erich Fromm To Have Or To Be Quotes

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

Erich Fromm

#2. The right to express our thoughts means something only if we are able to have thoughts of our own

Erich Fromm

#3. Freedom is not something we have, there is no such thing as freedom. Freedom is a quality of our personality: we are more or less free to resist pressure, more or less free to do what we want and to be ourselves. Freedom is always a question of increasing freedom one has, or decreasing it.

Erich Fromm

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. 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

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

Erich Fromm

#8. 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

#9. 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

#10. 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

#11. Exclusive love is a contradiction in itself.

Erich Fromm

#12. 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

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

Erich Fromm

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

Erich Fromm

#15. 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

#16. 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

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

Erich Fromm

#18. 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

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

Erich Fromm

#20. 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

#21. 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

#22. 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

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

Erich Fromm

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

Erich Fromm

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

Erich Fromm

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

Erich Fromm

#27. We are what we do.

Erich Fromm

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

Erich Fromm

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. 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