Quotes from book
Escape from Freedom

Escape from Freedom
Erich Fromm

Escape from Freedom is a book by the Frankfurt-born psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, first published in the United States by Farrar & Rinehart in 1941 and a year later as The Fear of Freedom in UK by Routledge & Kegan Paul. In the book, Fromm explores humanity's shifting relationship with freedom, with particular regard to the personal consequences of its absence. His special emphasis is the psychosocial conditions that facilitated the rise of Nazism.

Erich Fromm photo

“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

Erich Fromm photo

“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.”

Erich Fromm book Escape from Freedom

Source: Escape from Freedom

Erich Fromm photo

“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 book Escape from Freedom

Source: Escape from Freedom (1941), Ch. 1

Erich Fromm photo

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

Erich Fromm book Escape from Freedom

Source: Escape from Freedom (1941), Ch. 4

Erich Fromm photo

“Man’s biological weakness is the condition of human culture.”

Erich Fromm book Escape from Freedom

Source: Escape from Freedom (1941), Ch. 2

Erich Fromm photo

“The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.”

Erich Fromm book Escape from Freedom

Source: Escape from Freedom (1941), Ch. 7

Erich Fromm photo

“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 book Escape from Freedom

Source: Escape from Freedom (1941), Ch. 7, p. 262-3

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