Explore Quotes by Erich Fromm

Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unite him with others; love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity.

I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice.

Man is the only animal that can be bored.

Independent of others and in concert with others, your main task in life is to do what you can best do and become what you can potentially be.

The kind of relatedness to the world may be noble or trivial, but even being related to the basest kind of pattern is immensely preferable to being alone.

Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the same time the beginning of his freedom and the development of his reason.

If you want a Big Brother, you get all that comes with it.

One of the worst forms of mental suffering is boredom, not knowing what to do with oneself and one's life. Even if man had no monetary, or any other reward, he would be eager to spend his energy in some meaningful way because he could not stand the boredom which inactivity produces.

To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibility would be blind if they were not guided by knowledge.

Education makes machines which act like men and produces men who act like machines.

There is nothing of which we are more ashamed than of not being ourselves. And there is nothing which brings us greater joy and happiness than to think, feel, and say what is ours.

Man may be defined as the animal that can say ''I,'' that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.

Giving is the highest expression of potency.

Creativity is the ability to see and to respond.

Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance of the individual voter.

Man unites himself with the world in the process of creation.

The duty to be alive is the same as the duty to become oneself, to develop into the individual one potentially is.

Love is the child of freedom, never that of domination.

Reason is man's faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man's ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.

It takes a moment to tell someone you love them, but it takes a lifetime to prove it.

Mother's love is bliss, is peace, it need not be acquired, it need not be deserved. If it is there, it is like a blessing; if it is not there it is as if all the beauty had gone out of life.