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."

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“Man always dies before he is fully born.”

— Erich Fromm

Death

All Quotes by Erich Fromm

“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

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

— Erich Fromm

Freedom

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

— Erich Fromm

Faith

“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

“To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.”

— Erich Fromm

Hope

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

— Erich Fromm

Love

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

— Erich Fromm

Love

“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

“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.”

— Erich Fromm

Dreams

“In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.”

— Erich Fromm

Love

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

— Erich Fromm

Courage

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

— Erich Fromm

Art

“Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.”

— 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

“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