Erich Fromm Quotes

Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.

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.

Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies.

Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.

What most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.

One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.

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

Sanity is only that which is within the frame of reference of conventional thought.

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

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

Man always dies before he is fully born.

Man's biological weakness is the condition of human culture.

As we ascend the social ladder, viciousness wears a thicker mask.

Authority is not a quality one person "has," in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him.

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.

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.