Erich Fromm Quotes

“The sadistic person is as dependent on the submissive person as the latter is on the former; neither can live without the other.”

“The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.”

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

“I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.”

“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.”

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

“Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.”

“Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness.”

“In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.”

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

“Immature love says: “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says: “I need you because I love you.”

“In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.”

“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.”

“Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his individuality and uniqueness.”

“To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.”

“If I am what I have and if I lose what I have who then am I?”

“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.”

“We consume, as we produce, without any concrete relatedness to the objects with which we deal; We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.”

“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. ”

“The narcissistic, the domineering, the possessive woman can succeed in being a “loving” mother as long as the child is small. Only the really loving woman, the woman who is happier in giving than in taking, who is firmly rooted in her own existence, can be a loving mother when the child is in the process of separation.”