Quotes from Erich Fromm

no man must be the means for the ends of another man.

Die Liebe ist das Kind der Freiheit, niemals der Beherrschung

Whether a carpenter makes a table, or a goldsmith a piece of jewelry, whether the peasant grows his corn, or the painter paints a picture, in all types of creative work the worker and his object become one, man unites himself with the world in the process of creation. This, however, holds true only for productive work, for work in which I plan, produce, see the result of my work. In the modern work process of a clerk, the worker on the endless

The "identity crisis" of modern society is actually the crisis produced by the fact that its members have become selfless instruments, whose identity rests upon their participation in the corporations (or other giant bureaucracies). Where there is no authentic self, there can be no identity.

The experience of separateness arouses anxiety; it is, indeed, the source of all anxiety. Being separate means being cut off, without any capacity to use my human powers. Hence to be separate means to be helpless, unable to grasp the world—things and people—actively; it means that the world can invade me without my ability to react.

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 process attempts to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of logic and plausibility.

It is the task of the science of man to arrive eventually at a correct description of what deserves to be called human nature. What has often been called human nature is but one of its many manifestations - and often a pathological one - and the function of such mistaken definition usually has been to defend a particular type of society as being the necessary one.

An individual may be alone in a physical sense for many years and yet he may be related to ideas, values, or at least social patterns that give him a feeling of communion and belonging. On the other hand, he may live among people and yet be overcome with an utter feeling of isolation, the outcome of which, if it transcends a certain limit, is the state of insanity which schizophrenic disturbances present.

The attitude inherent in consumerism is that of swallowing the whole world. The consumer is the eternal suckling crying for the bottle.

The "tourist" with his camera is an outstanding symbol of an alienated relationship to the world. Being constantly occupied with taking pictures, actually he does not see anything at all, except through the intermediary of the camera. The camera sees for him, and the outcome of his "pleasure" trip is a collection of snapshots, which are the substitute for an experience which he could have had, but did not have.

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.

If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else, I love you, I must be able to say, I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself.

Greed and peace preclude each other.

In the view of the wise, Heaven is man and Earth woman: Earth fosters what Heaven lets fall.

If humanity continues to consume natural resources irresponsibly and disrupt the balance of nature that provides human life, it will be inevitable that we will encounter the catastrophe of total extinction in less than a hundred years.

Modern man thinks he loses something—time—when he does not do things quickly; yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains—except kill it.

Ma la donna non è un uomo evirato, e la sua sessualità è tipicamente femminile e non di natura maschile.

One of the most obvious explanations is that the leaders undertake many actions that make it possible for them to pretend they are doing something effective to avoid a catastrophe: endless conferences, resolutions, disarmament talks, all give the impression that the problems are recognized and something is being done to resolve them.

all of us are more or less insane, or more or less asleep

realists who have a special word for each type of automobile, but only the one word "love" to express the most varied kinds of affective experience.

l'amour est l'enfant de la liberté" as an old French song says; love is the child of freedom

Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies.

Not that people think that love is not important. They are starved for it; they watch endless numbers of films about happy and unhappy love stories, they listen to hundreds of trashy songs about love—yet hardly anyone thinks that there is anything that needs to be learned about love. This

They have their big, ever-changing egos, but none has a self, a core, a sense of identity.