Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm

26 quotes

The German -American sociologist and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm is someone whose pithy observations have become part of everyday conversation. Whether reflecting on Love or Society, Erich Fromm brought uncommon clarity to every subject. Browse 38 quotes by Erich Fromm that cover ground from Love, Society, Power, Dreams, and Science. To get a sense of their style, try: "The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots."

“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.”

— Erich Fromm

Love

All Quotes by Erich Fromm

“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”

— Erich Fromm

Courage

“In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.”

— Erich Fromm

God

“Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.”

— Erich Fromm

Love

“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

Equality

“There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started out with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which fails so regularly, as love.”

— Erich Fromm

Love

“Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.”

— Erich Fromm

Dreams

“Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?”

— Erich Fromm

Age

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

— Erich Fromm

Politics

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

— Erich Fromm

Power

“Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'”

— Erich Fromm

Love

“There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.”

— Erich Fromm

Freedom

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

— Erich Fromm

Art

“The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent.”

— Erich Fromm

Love

“If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.”

— Erich Fromm

Love

“The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man.”

— Erich Fromm

Nature

“Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.”

— Erich Fromm

Life

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

— Erich Fromm

Faith

“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”

— Erich Fromm

Love

“The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots.”

— Erich Fromm

Future

“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.”

— Erich Fromm

Love