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Erich Fromm Quotes - Page 12

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

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.

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.

Life, Hate, Men

The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind - not the fiend or the sadist.

Fear, Power, Men

Erich Fromm (2011). “The Heart of Man”, p.18, Lantern Books

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.

Art, Reality, Men

Love is hot a higher power which descends upon mn nor a duty which is imposed upon him; it is his own power by which he relates himself to the world and makes it truly his.

Inspirational, Love Is, Greatest Love

If the handbag could think, it would have a terrific inferiority feeling, because, not having been bought, it would feel useless.

Thinking, Feelings, Handbags

Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

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.

Men, Needs, Helping

Erich Fromm (2013). “Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics”, p.108, Open Road Media

The more the drive toward life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive toward destruction; the more life is realized, the less is the strength of destructiveness. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life.

Stronger, Outcomes, Life Is

Erich Fromm (1941). “Escape from Freedom”, Henry Holt & Company

When blended with sexuality, the death instinct is transformed into more harmless impulses expressed in sadism or masochism.

Sadism, Instinct, Sexuality

Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.37, Open Road Media

Man today is fascinated by the possibility of buying, more, better, and especially, new things. He is consumption hungry... To buy the latest gadget, the latest model of anything that is on the market, is the dream of everybody, in comparison to which the real pleasure in use is quite secondary. Modern man, if the dared to be articulate about his concept of heaven, would describe a vision which would look like the biggest department store in the world.

Dream, Real, Men

It is essential... that discipline should not be practised like a rule imposed on oneself from the outside, but that it becomes an expression of one's own will; that it is felt as pleasant, and that one slowly accustoms oneself to a kind of behaviour which one would eventually miss, if one stopped practising it.

Expression, Discipline, Missing

Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Love is not a spontaneous feeling, a thing that you fall into, but is something that requires thought, knowledge, care, giving, and respect. And it is something that is rare and difficult to find in capitalism, which commodifies human activity.

Art, Fall, Love Is

For [Sigmund ] Freud, the manifest dream, that is that which we remember after waking,is like a code message, that can be interpreted, provided the right key is avail-able, for example the method of free association.

Dream, Keys, Example

The third error leading to the assumption that there is nothing to be learned about love lies in the confusion between the initial experience of ‘falling’ in love, and the permanent state of being in love, or as we might better say, of ‘standing’ in love.

Falling In Love, Lying, Being In Love

Erich Fromm (2000). “The Art of Loving: The Centennial Edition”, p.4, A&C Black

What is it that distinguishes man from animals? It is not his upright posture.

Men, Animal, Posture

Erich, Fromm (1986). “For the love of life”

There are many who feel consciously hopeful and unconsciously hopeless, and there are few for whom it is the other way around.

Hopeful, Way, Hopeless

Erich Fromm (2011). “The Revolution of Hope”, p.23, Lantern Books

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.

Running, People, Suggestions

Erich Fromm (2000). “The Art of Loving: The Centennial Edition”, p.119, A&C Black

If an individual is able to love productively, he loves himself, too; if he can love only others, he cannot love at all.

Able, Individual, Ifs

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

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

Sanity, Conventional, Frame Of Reference

Erich Fromm (2013). “Greatness and Limitations of Freud's Thought”, p.1897, Open Road Media

Beyond the element of giving, the active characteristic of love becomes evident in the fact that it always implies certain basic elements, common to all forms of love. These are care, responsability, respect and knowledge

Giving, Facts, Elements

ERICH FROMM (1956). “THE ART OF LOVING”

I have a tremendous faith in the possibilities of man, which have shown in his past, and I believe if we avoid war, we shall be able to revive our real vision of life, but that we must see it, and therefore, that we must be critical to where we are.

Real, War, Believe

Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

We all dream; we do not understand our dreams, yet we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sleep minds, strange at least by comparison with the logical, purposeful doings of our minds when we are awake.

Dream, Sleep, Understanding

Erich Fromm (2013). “The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths”, p.7, Open Road Media

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

Tyrants, Political, Feelings

Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.135, Open Road Media

In the development of both capitalism and communism, as we visualize them in the next fifty or a hundred years, the processes that encourage human alienation will continue.

Years, Development, Fifty

Erich Fromm (2014). “The Dogma of Christ: and Other Essays on Religion, Psychology and Culture”, p.62, Open Road Media

If one admits that the influence of the outside world is essentially beneficial, the lack of such influence during sleep would tend to diminish the value of our dream activity so as to render it inferior to the mental activity that takes place when we are awake, when we are exposed to these beneficial influences of surrounding reality. But how can one say that the influence of reality is exclusively beneficial. Could it not also be damaging, and could its absence not give access to qualities superior to those that we have when awake?

Dream, Sleep, Reality

Source: www.scribd.com

I would consider a socialism a mixture of the minimum of centralization necessary for a modern industrial state, and a maximum of decentralization.

Mixtures, Socialism, Modern

Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

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