Erich Fromm Quotes on Man (16 Quotes)

In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.

Man may be defined as the animal that can say ''I,'' that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.

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.

The paradoxical and tragic situation of man is that his conscience is weakest when he needs it most

All great art is by its very essence in conflict with the society with which it exists. It expresses the truth about the existence regardless of whether this truth serves or hinders the survival purpose of a given society. All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society.

The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. 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.

The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man.

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

Just as love is an orientation which refers to all objects and is incompatible with the restriction to one object, so is reason a human faculty which must embrace the whole of the world with which man is confronted.

Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.

Socialism is the abolition of human self-alienation, the return of man as a real human being.

Man always dies before he is fully born.

Men are born equal but they are also born different

That man can destroy life is just as miraculous a feat as that he can create it, for life is the miracle, the inexplicable. In the act of destruction, man sets himself above life he transcends himself as a creature. Thus, the ultimate choice for a man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate.

The history of man is a graveyard of great cultures that came to catastrophic ends because of their incapacity for planned, rational, voluntary reaction to challenge

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