Erich Fromm: Trending quotes

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Erich Fromm: 238 quotes20 likes

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

Erich Fromm book The Art of Loving

Source: The Art of Loving

“if i am what i have, and i lose what i have, who then am i?”

Erich Fromm

Variant: If I am what I have, and if I lose what I have, who then am I?

“There is nothing inhuman, evil, or irrational which does not give some comfort, provided it is shared by a group.”

Erich Fromm book Psychoanalysis and Religion

Source: Psychoanalysis and Religion

“The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die - although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born.”

Erich Fromm The Sane Society

Source: The Sane Society

“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”

Erich Fromm

“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?”

Erich Fromm

Source: Love, Sexuality and Matriarchy: About Gender

“We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent — people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.”

Erich Fromm

Source: To Have or to Be? The Nature of the Psyche

“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”

Erich Fromm

Source: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness

“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.”

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

Source: Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 4 "Problems of Humanistic Ethics"

“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 book The Art of Loving

Source: The Art of Loving (1956), Ch. 2

“To be loved because of one's merit, because one deserves it, always leaves doubt; maybe I did not please the person whom I want to love me, maybe this, or that - there is always a fear that love could disappear.”

Erich Fromm book The Art of Loving

Source: The Art of Loving

“Freedom does not mean license.”

Erich Fromm

“There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.”

Erich Fromm

Source: Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics

“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 book The Art of Loving

Source: The Art of Loving

“The frightened individual seeks for somebody or something to tie his self
to; he cannot bear to be his own individual self any longer,
and he tries frantically to get rid of it and to feel security again by the elimination of this burden:
the self.”

Erich Fromm book Escape from Freedom

Source: Escape from Freedom

“If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can be validated.”

Erich Fromm

Source: Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics