Photo by Müller-May/Rainer Funk, via Wikimedia Commons
Erich Fromm Quotes from Escape from Freedom (1941)
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
Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction. Erich Fromm
Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance of the individual voter. Erich Fromm
The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal. Erich Fromm
If the individual realizes his self by spontaneous activity and thus relates himself to the world, he ceases to be an isolated atom; he and the world become part of one structuralized whole; he has his rightful place, and thereby his doubt concerning himself and the meaning of life disappears. This doubt sprang from his separateness and from the thwarting of life; when he can live, neither compulsively nor automatically but spontaneously, the doubt disappears. He is aware of himself as an active and creative individual and recognizes that there is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself. Erich Fromm
The kind of relatedness to the world may be noble or trivial, but even being related to the basest kind of pattern is immensely preferable to being alone. Erich Fromm
Man’s biological weakness is the condition of human culture. Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm Quotes from Man for Himself (1947)
Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve. Erich Fromm
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. Erich Fromm
Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others. Erich Fromm
Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either. Erich Fromm
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers. Erich Fromm
To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable. Erich Fromm
Temperament refers to the mode of reaction and is constitutional and not changeable; character is essentially formed by a person’s experiences, especially of those in early life, and changeable, to some extent, by insights and new kinds of experiences. If a person has a choleric temperament, for instance, his mode of reaction is ‘quick and strong’. But what he is quick or strong about depends on his kind of relatedness, his character. If he is a productive, just, loving person he will react quickly and strongly when he loves, when he is enraged by injustice, and when he is impressed by a new idea. If he is a destructive or sadistic character, he will be quick and strong in his destructiveness or in his cruelty. The confusion between temperament and character has had serious consequences for ethical theory. Preferences with regard to differences in temperament are mere matters of subjective taste. But differences in character are ethically of the most fundamental importance. Erich Fromm
Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness. Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes…the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his individuality and uniqueness. To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibility would be blind if they were not guided by the knowledge of the person’s individuality. Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm Quotes from The Sane Society (1955)
By alienation is meant a mode of experience in which the person experiences himself as an alien. He has become, one might say, estranged from himself. He does not experience himself as the centre of his world, as the creator of his own acts – but his acts and their consequences have become his masters, whom he obeys, or whom he may even worship. The alienated person is out of touch with himself as he is out of touch with any other person. He, like the others, is experienced as things are experienced; with the senses and with common sense, but at the same time without being related to oneself and to the world outside positively. Erich Fromm
In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead. Erich Fromm
It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas and feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consensual validation as such has no bearing on reason or mental health. Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm Quotes from The Art of Loving (1956)
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. Erich Fromm
Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says: ‘I need you because I love you’. Erich Fromm
Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an ordination of character which determines the relatedness of the person to the whole world as a whole, not toward one object of love. Erich Fromm
Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. Erich Fromm
All men are in need of help and depend on one another. Human solidarity is the necessary condition for the unfolding of any one individual. Erich Fromm
Love isn’t something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn’t a feeling, it is a practice. Erich Fromm
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
Mother’s love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved. Erich Fromm
One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often. Erich Fromm
Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love. Erich Fromm
What most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal. Erich Fromm
The lack of objectivity, as far as foreign nations are concerned, is notorious. From one day to another, another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while one’s own nation stands for everything that is good and noble. Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard—every action of oneself by another. Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals which they serve. Erich Fromm
Envy, jealousy, ambition, any kind of greed are passions; love is an action, the practice of human power, which can be practiced only in freedom and never as a result of compulsion. Erich Fromm
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
The same polarity of the male and female principle exists in nature; not only, as is obvious in animals and plants, but in the polarity of the two fundamental functions, that of receiving and penetrating. It is the polarity of earth and rain, of the river and the ocean, of night and day, of darkness and light, of matter and spirit. Erich Fromm
In erotic love, two people who were separate become one. In motherly love, two people who were one become separate. The mother must not only tolerate, she must wish and support the child’s separation. Erich Fromm
The narcissistic, the domineering, the possessive woman can succeed in being a ‘loving’ mother as long as the child is small. Only the really loving woman, the woman who is happier in giving than in taking, who is firmly rooted in her own existence, can be a loving mother when the child is in the process of separation. Erich Fromm
The sadistic person is as dependent on the submissive person as the latter is on the former; neither can live without the other. The difference is only that the sadistic person commands, exploits, hurts, humiliates, and that the masochistic person is commanded, exploited, hurt, humiliated. This is a considerable difference in a realistic sense; in a deeper emotional sense, the difference is not so great as that which they both have in common: fusion without integrity. Erich Fromm
In the dominant Western religious system, the love of God is essentially the same as the belief in God, in God’s existence, God’s justice, God’s love. The love of God is essentially a thought experience. In the Eastern religions and in mysticism, the love of God is an intense feeling experience of oneness, inseparably linked with the expression of this love in every act of living. Erich Fromm
Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality. Erich Fromm
Fairness means not to use fraud and trickery in the exchange of commodities and services and the exchange of feelings. Erich Fromm
The spirit of a production-centered, commodity-greedy society is such that only the non-conformist can defend himself sufficiently against it. Those who are seriously concerned with love as the only rational answer to the problem of human existence must, then, arrive at the conclusion that important and radical changes in our social structure are necessary, if love is to become a social and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon. Erich Fromm
Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians; people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in themselves. All activities are subordinated to economic goals, means have become ends; man is an automaton — well fed, well clad, but without any ultimate concern for that which is his peculiarly human quality and function. If man is to be able to love, he must be put in his supreme place. The economic machine must serve him, rather than he serve it. He must be enabled to share experience, to share work, rather than, at best, share in profits. Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm Quotes from Credo (1965)
I believe that the fundamental alternative for man is the choice between ‘life’ and ‘death’; between creativity and destructive violence; between reality and illusions; between objectivity and intolerance; between brotherhood-independence and dominance-submission. Erich Fromm
By necrophilia is meant love for all that is violence and destruction; the desire to kill; the worship of force; attraction to death, to suicide, to sadism; the desire to transform the organic into the inorganic by means of ‘order’. The necrophile, lacking the necessary qualities to create, in his impotence finds it easy to destroy because for him it serves only one quality: force. Erich Fromm
By narcissism is meant ceasing to have an authentic interest in the outside world but instead an intense attachment to oneself, to one’s own group, clan, religion, nation, race, etc. — with consequent serious distortions of rational judgment. In general, the need for narcissistic satisfaction derives from the necessity to compensate for material and cultural poverty. Erich Fromm
I believe that the man choosing progress can find a new unity through the full development of all his human forces, which are produced in three orientations. These can be presented separately or together: biophilia, love for humanity and nature, and independence and freedom. Erich Fromm
I believe that love is the main key to open the doors to the ‘growth’ of man. Love and union with someone or something outside of oneself, union that allows one to put oneself into relationship with others, to feel one with others, without limiting the sense of integrity and independence. Erich Fromm
I believe that the experience of love is the most human and humanizing act that it is given to man to enjoy and that it, like reason, makes no sense if conceived in a partial way. Erich Fromm
I believe that freedom is not a constant attribute that ‘we have’ or ‘we don’t have’; perhaps there is only one reality: the act of liberating ourselves in the process of using choices. Every step in life that heightens the maturity of man heightens his ability to choose the freeing alternative. Erich Fromm
I believe that none can ‘save’ his fellow man by making a choice for him. To help him, he can indicate the possible alternatives, with sincerity and love, without being sentimental and without illusion. The knowledge and awareness of the freeing alternatives can reawaken in an individual all his hidden energies and put him on the path to choosing respect for ‘life’ instead of for ‘death’. Erich Fromm
I believe in the possible realization of a world in which man can be much, even if he has little; a world in which the dominant motivation of existence is not consumption; a world in which ‘man’ is the end, first and last; a world in which man can find the way of giving a purpose to his life as well as the strength to live free and without illusions. Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm Quotes from The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973)
People have committed suicide because of their failure to realize the passions for love, power, fame, revenge. Cases of suicide because of a lack of sexual satisfaction are virtually nonexistent. Erich Fromm
Psychoanalysis is essentially a theory of unconscious strivings, of resistance, of falsification of reality according to one’s subjective needs and expectations. Erich Fromm
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
Neurosis can be understood best as the battle between tendencies within an individual. Erich Fromm
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
Exploitation and manipulation produce boredom and triviality; they cripple man, and all factors that make man into a psychic cripple turn him also into a sadist or a destroyer. Erich Fromm
Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair. If one truly responds to man and his future, i.e., concernedly and ‘responsibly’. one can respond only by faith or by despair. Rational faith as well as rational despair are based on the most thorough, critical knowledge of all the factors that are relevant for the survival of man. Erich Fromm
Other Erich Fromm Quotes
Human history began with an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience. Erich Fromm (On Disobedience and Other Essays (1981))
What is it that distinguishes man from animals? It is not his upright posture. That was present in the apes long before the brain began to develop. Nor is it the use of tools. It is something altogether new, a previously unknown quality: self-awareness. Erich Fromm (For the Love of Life (1986))
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 (New York Times, 5 January 1964)
The revolutionary and critical thinker is in a certain way always outside of his society while of course he is at the same time also in it. Erich Fromm (Human Nature and Social Theory (1969))
Among most Christians the Old Testament is little read in comparison to the New Testament. Furthermore, much of what is read is often distorted by prejudice. Frequently the Old Testament is believed to express exclusively the principles of justice and revenge, in contrast to the New Testament, which represents those of love and mercy; even the sentence, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’, is thought by many to derive from the New, not the Old Testament. Or the Old Testament is believed to have been written exclusively in the spirit of narrow nationalism and to contain nothing of supranational universalism so characteristic of the New Testament. Erich Fromm (You Shall Be As Gods (1966))
Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending it. He has to find principles of action and decision-making which replace the principles of instincts. He has to have a frame of orientation which permits him to organize a consistent picture of the world as a condition for consistent actions. He has to fight not only against the dangers of dying, starving, and being hurt, but also against another danger which is specifically human: that of becoming insane. In other words, he has to protect himself not only against the danger of losing his life but also against the danger of losing his mind. Erich Fromm (The Revolution of Hope (1968))
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. Erich Fromm (The Revolution of Hope (1968))