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."

“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

All Quotes by Erich Fromm

“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

“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

“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

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

— Erich Fromm

Courage

“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

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

— Erich Fromm

Freedom

“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

“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

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

— Erich Fromm

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.”

— 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

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

— Erich Fromm

Politics

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

— Erich Fromm

Art

“Man always dies before he is fully born.”

— Erich Fromm

Death

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

— Erich Fromm

Power

“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

“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

“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