Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous.
Interpretation
Giving reflects inner strength and vitality, leading to joy and fulfillment.
In this quote, Erich Fromm emphasizes that the act of giving transcends mere charity; it signifies an expression of one’s inner power and abundance. When we give, we tap into our vitality and recognize our capacity for joy, creating a cycle of positivity that enhances our sense of self-worth and connection with others.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a community service event to inspire volunteerism.
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.
The main question ... is not what motive inspired the law, but what it will be possible for men of bad motive to do with the law.
...quality of life lies in knowledge, in culture. Values are what constitute true quality of life, the supreme quality of life, even above food, shelter and clothing.
Challenging the integrity of the non-proliferation regime is a matter which can affect international peace and security.
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids Sprouting despondently at area gates.
You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.
There is no freedom that I would grant to any man that I would refuse to woman, and there is no freedom that I would refuse to either man or woman except the freedom to invade ... whoever has the ballot has the freedom to invade, and whoever wants the ballot wants the freedom to invade. Give woman equality with man, by all means; but do it by taking power from man, not giving it to woman.
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