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Erich Fromm Quotes

All Quotes Achievement Art Attitude Authority Awareness Belief Birth Boredom Challenges Character Children Choices Concentration Confusion Country Creation Creativity Culture Death Desire Doubt Education Effort Ego Enthusiasm Envy Faith Falling In Love Family Feelings Freedom Giving Greed Growth Happiness Hate Heaven History Home Human Nature Humanity Identity Independence Inspirational Integrity Joy Judging Judgment Justice Language Learning Liberty Life Life And Death Loneliness Love Love Life Lying Manipulation Meaning Of Life Mom Narcissism Overcoming Passion Past Personality Power Psychology Purpose Quality Reality Religion Responsibility Sadness Sanity Sleep Socialism Society Soul Survival Teaching Today Unity Values Virtue Vision War

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.

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.

Practice, Discipline, Feelings

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.

Men, Challenges, Humanity

Erich Fromm (2013). “May Man Prevail?: An Inquiry into the Facts and Fictions of Foreign Policy”, Open Road Media

The lust for power is not rooted in strength but in weakness.

Power, Lust, Weakness

Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.166, Open Road Media

Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.

Selfish, Love You, Greed

Erich Fromm (2014). “The Erich Fromm Reader: Readings Selected and Edited by Rainer Funk”, p.105, Open Road Media

The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.

Business, Inner Peace, Insecurity

The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.

Errors, People, Facts

Erich Fromm (2014). “The Erich Fromm Reader: Readings Selected and Edited by Rainer Funk”, p.74, Open Road Media

It takes a moment to tell someone you love them, but it takes a lifetime to prove it.

Love, Romantic, Moments

Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.

Effort, Greed, Needs

Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.121, Open Road Media

Love of others and love of ourselves are not alternatives. On the contrary, an attitude of love towards themselves will be found in all those who are capable of loving others.

Attitude, Self Esteem, Alternatives

Erich Fromm (2013). “Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics”, p.135, Open Road Media

If other people do not understand our behavior-so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being 'asocial' or 'irrational' in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them.

Hurt, Eye, Long

Erich Fromm (1992). “The art of being”, Continuum Intl Pub Group

An illusion shared by everyone becomes a reality.

Reality, Illusion

Erich Fromm (2014). “The Dogma of Christ: and Other Essays on Religion, Psychology and Culture”, p.14, Open Road Media

Many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of 'unadjusted' individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself.

Ideas, Numbers, Culture

Erich Fromm (2013). “The Sane Society”, p.12, Open Road Media

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.

Life, Birthday, Character

Man for Himself (1947) ch. 4

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

Letting Go, Spiritual, Courage

To love somebody is not just a strong feeling - it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.

Strong, Decision, Feelings

Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.61, Open Road Media

Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.

Ability To Love, Ability, Art Of Loving

Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.113, Open Road Media

Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.

Faith, Confidence, Able

Erich Fromm (2013). “Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics”, p.206, Routledge

To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness

Grief, Grieving, Mourning

Erich Fromm (2013). “Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics”, p.195, Open Road Media

The deepest need of the human being is to overcome our separateness, to leave the prison of our loneliness.

Loneliness, Being Alone, Overcoming

When people can't handle God any more, they turn to religion.

People, Religion, Turns

To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern – and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values.

Love, Pain, Disappointment

Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.139, Open Road Media

Hate is a product of the unfulfilled life.

Life, Hate, Products

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

Love, Life, Faith

Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.141, Open Road Media

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 go outside himself and seek fulfillment where it cannot be found. He will look for solutions and answers at every point except where they can be found- in himself.

Believe, Past, Clouds

People do not see that the main question is not : "Am I loved?" which is to a large extent the question : "Am I approved of? Am I protected? Am I admired?" The main question is: "Can I love?

People, Protected, Approved

Erich Fromm (2014). “The Essential Fromm: Life Between Having and Being”, p.22, Open Road Media

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