Thus, the ultimate choice for a man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate.
Interpretation
Human beings have the power to either uplift themselves and others through love and creation or to bring about negativity through hate and destruction.
This quote by Erich Fromm discusses the nature of human choice and existence. It suggests that at the core of being human is the drive to transcend one's own limitations, which can lead to two fundamental paths: the path of creation, characterized by love and positive contribution, or the path of destruction, marked by hate and negativity. Fromm emphasizes that these choices define our humanity and impact both ourselves and the world around us.
In practice
In a speech about personal empowerment, I might say, 'As Erich Fromm reminds us, we have the ultimate choice to create or to destroy.'
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 β 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.
I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk when we remember the great sacrifice which he made who left His Father's throne on high to give Himself for us.
When death comes, he respects neither age nor merit. He sweeps from the earthly existence the sick and the strong, the rich and the poor, and should teach us to live to be prepared for death.
As we have sought through the centuries to define ourselves as human beings and as nations through the prisms of history and literature, no small part of that effort has drawn us to the subject of war. We might even say that the humanities began with war and from war, and have remained entwined with it ever since.
Much of the Christian religion has largely become βholding onβ instead of letting go. But God, it seems to me, does the holding on (to us!), and we must learn the letting go (of everything else).
By my existence I am nothing more than an empty place, an outline,that is reserved within being in general. Given with it, though, is the duty to fill in this empty place. That is my life.
I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don't say what it wants to hear.
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