Erich Fromm Quotes (84 Quotes)

There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.

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

The scars left from the child's defeat in the fight against irrational authority are to be found at the bottom of every neurosis.

To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.

One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.

Integrity simple means not violating one's own identity.

To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.

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

Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.

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.

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

Only when man succeeds in developing his reason and love further than he has done so far, only when he can build a world based on human solidarity and justice, only when he can feel rooted in the experience of universal brotherliness, will he have tr

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.

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

Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'

If I am what I have and if I lose what I have who then am I?

In the 19th century inhumanity meant cruelty in the 20th century it means schizoid self-alienation.

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.

Understanding a person does not mean condoning it only means that one does not accuse him as if one were God or a judge placed above him

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.

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.

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.

If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.

The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.

The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.

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

Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.

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.

Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled to concentrate to accept conflict and tension to be born everyday to feel a sense of self.

Destructiveness is the outcome of an unlived life.

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.

In love the paradox occurs that two things become one and yet remain two.

Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance of the individual voter.

Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want

Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies.

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.

The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have.

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

Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.

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

If I am what I have and what I have is lost, who then am I.

Let your mind start a journey thru 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.

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

As long as anyone believes that his ideal and purpose is outside him, that it is above the clouds, in the past or in the future, he will gooutside himself and seek fulfillment where it cannot be found. He will look for solutions and answers at every point except where they canbe found in himself.

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

Dreams - A microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul.

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.