The more the drive toward life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive toward destruction; the more life is realized, the less is the strength of destructiveness. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life.
Interpretation
Frustration of life's impulses leads to destructive behaviors, while fulfilling life reduces destructiveness.
In this quote, Erich Fromm expresses the idea that when individuals are unable to pursue their life goals and aspirations, the frustration can manifest as destructive tendencies. Conversely, when one actively engages in and realizes their life potential, these destructive impulses diminish. The essence is that a fulfilled life is less likely to breed negativity and harmful actions, highlighting the importance of pursuing meaningful existence.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a motivational seminar to emphasize the importance of pursuing one's dreams.
Love, experienced thus, is a constant challenge; it is not a resting place, but a moving, growing, working together; even whether there is harmony or conflict; joy or sadness, is secondary to the fundamental fact that two people experience themselves from the essence of their existence, that they are only one with each other by being one with themselves, rather than by fleeing from themselves.
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.
Infantile love follows the principle: "I love because I am loved." Mature love follows the principle: "I am loved because I love." Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you.
To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern – and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values.
In times of change, learners inherit the earth
In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.
It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong.
But the present world is also designed for something which has not yet happened. It is like a violin waiting to be played: beautiful to look at, graceful to hold - and yet if you'd never heard one in the hands of a musician, you wouldn't believe the new dimensions of beauty yet to be revealed.
Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabric hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once.
I ask no risen dust to teach me immortality; I am conscious of eternal life.
If state, party and social policy will not be based on morality, then mankind has no future to speak of.
It may be normal, darling; but I'd rather be natural.
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