“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”
Courage
“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.”
EqualityAll Quotes by Erich Fromm
“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.”
Dreams“Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.”
Faith“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.”
Hope“Man always dies before he is fully born.”
Death“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.”
Dreams“The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.”
Politics“The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.”
Art“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.”
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.”
Equality“Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.”
Love“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“Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'”
Love“Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.”
Love“The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots.”
Future“There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.”
Power“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.”
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.”
Nature“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.”
Love“Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?”
Age