Erich Fromm

“Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.”

“Critical and radical thought will only bear fruit when it is blended with the most precious quality man is endowed with - the love of life”

“The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have.”

“Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.”

“What does one person give to another? He gives of himself, of the most precious he has, he gives of his life. This does not necessarily mean that he sacrifices his life for the other—but that he gives him of that which is alive in him; he gives him of his joy, of his interest, of his understanding, of his knowledge, of his humor, of his sadness—of all expressions and manifestations of that which is alive in him. In thus giving of his life, he enriches the other person, he enhances the other's sense of aliveness by enhancing his own sense of aliveness. He does not give in order to receive; giving is in itself exquisite joy. But in giving he cannot help bringing something to life in the other person, and this which is brought to life reflects back to him.”

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

“The mature response to the problem of existence is love.”

“Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance, albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking processes attempt to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of plausibility. This level of consciousness is supposed to reflect reality; it is the map we use for organizing our life.”

“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. Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.”

“Freedom is not a constant attribute which we either "have" or "have not." In fact, there is no such thing as "freedom" except as a word and an abstract concept. There is only one reality: the act of freeing ourselves in the process of making choices. In this process the degree of our capacity to make choices varies with each act, with our practice of life.”

“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality. ”

“Die Liebe ist das Kind der Freiheit,niemals der Beherrschung”

“Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.”

“Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men and from nature. His main aim is profitable exchange of his skills, knowledge, and of himself, his "personality package" with others who are equally intent on a fair and profitable exchange. Life has no goal except the one to move, no principle except the one of fair exchange, no satisfaction except the one to consume.p97.”

“Reason flows from the blending of rational thought and feeling. If the two functions are torn apart, thinking deteriorates into schizoid intellectual activity and feeling deteriorates into neurotic life-damaging passions.”

“If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.”

“Aztán az ember észre fogja venni azt, hogy noha tudatosan attól fél, hogy nem szeretik, igazából, bár rendszerint öntudatlanul, szeretni fél. Szeretni annyi, mint feltétel nélkül rábízni magunkat valakire, teljesen odaadni magunkat abban a reményben, hogy szeretetünk majd szeretetet hoz létre a szeretett személyben is. A szeretet hitből származó cselekedet, és akiben kevés a hit, abban kevés a szeretet is.”

“Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies”

“If other people do not understand our behavior—so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being "asocial" or "irrational" in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them. How many lives have been ruined by this need to "explain," which usually implies that the explanation be "understood," i.e. approved. Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds, your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself—to his reason and his conscience—and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation.”

“The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity.”

“Vernunft ist die Fähigkeit, objektiv zu denken. Die ihr zugrunde liegende Haltung ist die Demut.”

“Man schließt zu zweit einen Bund gegen die Welt und hält dann diesen égoisme à deux irrtümlich für Liebe und Vertrautheit.”

“Die Idee, dass man die Wahrheit auf dem Weg des Denkens finden könne, führt nicht nur zum Dogma, sondern auch zur Wissenschaft.”

“Das Denken kann uns nur zur Erkenntnis führen, dass es selsbt uns die letzte Antwort nicht geben kann.”

“Auf ihrer Suche nach der Einheit hinter der Mannigfaltigkeit kamen die brahmanischen Denker zu dem Schluss, dass das von ihnen wahrgenommene Gegensatzpaar nicht das Wesen der Dinge, sondern das Wesen des wahrnehmenden Geistes widerspiegelt. Das wahrnehmende Denken muss sich selbst transzendieren, um die wahre Wirklichkeit zu erreichen. Der Widerspruch ist eine Kategorie des menschlichen Geistes und nicht an und für sich ein Element der Wirklichkeit.”

“Die Entwicklung der patriarchalischen Gesellschaft geht Hand in Hand mit der Entwicklung des Privateigentums”

“Wenn ich zu einem anderen sagen kann: "Ich liebe dich", muss ich auch sagen können: "Ich liebe in dir auch alle anderen, ich liebe durch dich die ganze Welt, ich liebe in dir auch mich selbst.”

“Selbst nach der Geburt unterscheidet sich das Kind kaum von dem, was es vor der Geburt war; es kann noch keinen Gegenstand erkennen, es ist sich seiner selbst und der Welt als etwas außerhalb von ihm Liegendes noch nicht bewusst.”

“[Erkenntnis] ist nur möglich, wenn ich mein eigenes Interesse transzendiere und den anderen so sehe, wie er wirklich ist.”

“Die heutige Gesellschaft predigt das Ideal einer nicht-individualisierten Gleichheit, weil sie menschliche Atome braucht, die sich untereinander völlig gleichen, damit sie im Massenbetrieb glatt und reibungslos funktionieren, damit alle den gleichen Anweisungen folgen und jeder trotzdem überzeugt ist, das zu tun, was er will. Genauso wie die moderne Massenproduktion die Standardisierung der Erzeugnisse verlangt, so verlangt auch der gesellschaftliche Prozess die Standardisierung des Menschen, und diese Standardisierung nennt man dann "Gleichheit".”

“[Der Mensch] würde dem Wahnsinn verfallen, wenn er sich nicht aus diesem Gefängnis befreien könnte - wenn er nicht in irgendeiner Form seine Hände nach anderen Menschen ausstrecken und sich mit der Welt außerhalb seiner selbst vereinigen könnte.”

“Der Mensch sieht sich - zu allen Zeiten und in allen Kulturen - vor das Problem der Lösung der einen und immer gleichen Frage gestellt: wie er sein Abgetrenntsein überwinden, wie er zur Vereinigung gelangen, wie er sein eigenes einzelnes Leben transzendieren und das Einswerden erreichen kann.”

“Das Wesentliche an der Existenz des Menschen ist ja, dass er sich über das Tierreich und seine instiktive Anpassung erhoben hat, dass er die Natur transzendiert hat, wenn er sie auch nie ganz verlässt.”

“Die meisten Menschen sehen das Problem der Liebe in erster Linie als das Problem, selbst geliebt zu werden, statt zu lieben und lieben zu können.”

“There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as 'moral indignation,' which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.”

“Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort.”

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

“Freedom to creat and construct, to wonder and to venture. Such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible, not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine . . . It is not enough that men are not slaves; if social conditions further the existence of automatons, the result will not be love of life, but love of death.”

“The pleasure in complete domination over another person (or other animate creature) is the very essence of the sadistic drive. Another way of formulating the same thought is to say that the aim of sadism is to transform man into a thing, something animate into something inanimate, since by complete and absolute control the living loses one essential quality of life - freedom.”

“Man’s main task is to give birth to himself. ”

“Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total… Man has created a world of man-made things as it never existed before. He has constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine he built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces are which he unleashes, the more powerless he feels himself as a human being. He is owned by his creations, and has lost ownership of himself.”

“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”

“Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. 'Patriotism' is its cult...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.”

“There is nothing inhuman, evil, or irrational which does not give some comfort, provided it is shared by a group.”

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

“La raison découle du mélange de la pensée rationnelle et des sentiments. Si les deux fonctions se dissocient, la pensée se détériore en activité intellectuelle schizoïde et les sentiments en passions névrotiques autodestructrices. ”

“Greedhas no satiation point, since its consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression it is meant to overcome.”

“A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his "normal" contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society. In the process of going further in his analysis, i.e. of growing to greater independence and productivity,his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves.”

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

“Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one “object” of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet, most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty.”