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Erich Fromm Quotes - Page 9

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

We have a religious renaissance today in America, as many people say. I would say this religious renaissance, ninety percent of it is the greatest danger true religious experience has ever been confronted with.

We have a religious renaissance today in America, as many people say. I would say this religious renaissance, ninety percent of it is the greatest danger true religious experience has ever been confronted with.

Religious, America, People

Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

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. He cannot go back to the prehuman state of harmony with nature, and he does not know where he will arrive if he goes forward. Man's existential contradiction results in a state of constant disequilibrium. This disequilibrium distinguishes him from the animal, which lives, as it were, in harmony with nature.

Home, Animal, Men

Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.373, Open Road Media

We may know ourselves, and yet even with all the efforts we make, we do not know ourselves. We know our fellowman, and yet we do not know him, because we are not a thing, and our fellowman is not a thing. The further we reach into the depths of our being, on someone else's being, the more the goal of knowledge eludes us.

Elude Us, Goal, Effort

Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.37, Open Road Media

We substitute, or we rather hide, this fear of real intimacy by a superficial kind of friendliness, which is quite nice, but nevertheless, very shallow.

Real, Nice, Kind

Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

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.

Love, Life, Two

Erich Fromm (2013). “The Sane Society”, p.166, Open Road Media

Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the same time the beginning of his freedom and the development of his reason.

Freedom, Men, Liberty

"Psychoanalysis and Religion".

Only in being productively active can man make sense of his life.

Men, Make Sense, Active

Erich Fromm, Karl Marx (2013). “Marx's Concept of Man: Including 'Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts'”, p.26, Bloomsbury Publishing

Freedom is not a constant attribute which we either "have" or "have not." In fact, there is no such thing as "freedom" except as a word and an abstract concept. There is only one reality: the act of freeing ourselves in the process of making choices. In this process the degree of our capacity to make choices varies with each act, with our practice of life.

Reality, Practice, Choices

Erich Fromm (2011). “The Heart of Man”, p.132, Lantern Books

The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation; in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society - and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic.

Home, Average, Sick

If the meaning of life has become doubtful, if one's relations to others and to oneself do not offer security, then fame is one means to silence one's doubts. It has a function to be compared with that of the Egyptian pyramids or the Christian faith in immortality: it elevates one's individual life from its limitations and instability to the plane of indestructability; if one's name is known to one's contemporaries and if one can hope that it will last for centuries, then one's life has meaning and significance by this very reflection of it in the judgments of others.

Christian, Mean, Reflection

Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.57, Open Road Media

Loving becomes, and the ability to love, becomes one of the most important things in life.

Love Is, Things In Life, Important

Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men and from nature. His main aim is profitable exchange of his skills, knowledge, and of himself, his "personality package" with others who are equally intent on a fair and profitable exchange. Life has no goal except the one to move, no principle except the one of fair exchange, no satisfaction except the one to consume.p97.

Moving, Men, Skills

Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.107, Open Road Media

Critical and radical thought will only bear fruit when it is blended with the most precious quality man is endowed with - the love of life

Love Life, Men, Quality

Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.728, Open Road Media

Even if man's hunger and thirst and his sexual strivings are completely satisfied, 'he' is not satisfied. In contrast to the animal his most compelling problems are not solved then, they only begin. He strives for power or for love, or for destruction, he risks his life for religious, for political, for humanistic ideals, and these strivings are what constitutes and characterizes the peculiarity of human life.

Religious, Animal, Men

Erich Fromm (2013). “Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics”, p.46, Routledge

Modern capitalism needs men who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority or principle or conscience-- yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected of them, to fit into the social machine without friction; who can be guided without force, led without leaders, prompted without aim-- except the one to make good, to be on the move, to function, to go ahead.

Moving, Independent, Men

Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous.

Love, Lying, Power

"The Art of Loving".

Men are born equal but they are also born different.

Respect, Equality, Men

Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.266, Open Road Media

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

Sympathy, Death, Wise

Erich Fromm (2013). “Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics”, p.162, Routledge

Also in contemporary Western society the union with the group is the prevalent way of overcoming separateness. It is a union which the individual self disappears to a large extent, and where the aim is to belong to the heard. If I am like everybody else, if I have no feeling or thoughts which make me different, if I conform in custom, dress, ideas, to the pattern of the group, I am saved: saved from the frightening experience of aloneness.

Self, Ideas, Feelings

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

I would say our social relationships are relatively shallow. We are actually afraid to be intimate, with people - many people even with their wives and husbands.

Husband, People, Wife

Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

There is no word in our language which has been so much misused and prostituted as the word love. It has been preached by those who were ready to condone every cruelty if it served their purpose; it has been used as a disguise under which to force people into sacrificing their own happiness, into submitting their whole self to those who profited from this surrender. [...] It has been made so empty that for many people love may mean no more than that two people have lived together for twenty years just without fighting more often than once a week.

Love, Mean, Sacrifice

Erich Fromm (1997). “Love, Sexuality, and Matriarchy: About Gender”, Fromm International

Human history began with an act of disobedience and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.

Obedience, Unlikely, Humans

"Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem". "On Disobedience and Other Essays" by Erich Fromm, 1981.

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

Art, Creation, Capacity

In the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.

Lying, Expression, Generosity

Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.29, Open Road Media

Today, we talk a lot about equality, but I think what most people mean by it is sameness - that everybody is the same - and they are afraid if they are not the same, they are not equal.

Mean, Thinking, People

Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

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