Erich Fromm Quotes
Most popular Erich Fromm Quotes
Man is the only animal that can be bored.
Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.
Men are born equal but they are also born different.
Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself.
Not one who has much is rich, but one who gives much.
Education is helping a child realize his potentialities.
Education is helping the child realize his potentialities.
Fortitude is the capacity to say "no" when the world want to hear "yes."
If one fully understands all the circumstances...one may have compassion.
Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little love is of little faith.
The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.
One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.
Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
Education makes machines which act like men and produces men who act like machines.
The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism.
Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.
The history of thought is the history of an ever-increasing approximation to the truth.
Neurosis can be understood best as the battle between two tendencies within an individual.
Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies.
The capacity to be puzzled is indeed the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.
There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.
The paradoxical—and tragic—situation of man is that his conscience is weakest when he needs it most.
Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.
Man may be defined as the animal that can say "I," that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.
Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says: 'I need you because I love you.'
The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.
While every human being has a capacity for love, its realization is one of the most difficult achievements.
Boredom is nothing but the experience of a paralysis of our productive powers and the sense of unaliveness.
Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one's identity, in the many ways in which such violation is possible.
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
There are many who feel consciously hopeful and unconsciously hopeless, and there are few for whom it is the other way around.
Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.
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.
Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled, to concentrate, to accept conflict and tension, to be born every day, to feel a sense of self.
Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.
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.
I am convinced that boredom is one of the greatest tortures. If I were to imagine Hell, it would be the place where you were continually bored.
The human passions transform man from a mere thing into a hero, into a being that in spite of tremendous handicaps tries to make sense out of life.
The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity, without panic and undue fear.
Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.
Perhaps no phenomenon contains so much destructive feeling as "moral indignation," which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.
Psychology as a science has its limitations, and, as the logical consequence of theology is mysticism, so the ultimate consequence of psychology is love.
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.
Narcissism is the earliest stage of human development, and the person who in later life has returned to this stage is incapable of love; in the extreme case he is insane.
Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.
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.
Man is the only animal who does not feel at home in nature, who can feel evicted from paradise, the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem that he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.
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.
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.
The maxim "to do unto others as you would like them to do unto you" can be interpreted as meaning "be fair in your exchange with others." But actually, it was formulated originally as a more popular version of the Biblical "Love thy neighbor as thyself."
The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one.
There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers, by living productively.
