Quotes from Erich Fromm

The approach of normative humanism is based on the assumption that, as in any other problem, there are right and wrong, satisfactory and unsatisfactory solutions to the problem of human existence.

The supremacy of cerebral, manipulative thinking goes together with an atrophy of emotional life.

Der Anpassungstheorie liegen folgende Annahmen zugrunde: 1. Jede Gesellschaft als soche ist normal; 2. seelisch krann ist, wer von dem von der Gesellschaft favorisierten Persönlichkeitstyp abweicht; 3. das Gesundheitswesen im Bereich von Psychiatrie udn Psychotherapie verfolgt das Ziel, den einzelnen auf das Niveau des Durchschnittschmenschen zu bringen, unabhängig davon, ob dieser blind ist oder nicht blind.

The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent.

Hayat?m?za giren herkes deÄŸerlidir ama herkes özel deÄŸildir. Sayg? hepsine, sevgi lay?k olana verilir.

Ä°nsan seviyorsa iki ÅŸeyi asla yapmaz. Aldatmaz ve aÄŸlatmaz. Çünkü aldatmak insan onuruna; aÄŸlatmak ise insan yüreÄŸine yap?lm?? en çirkin sald?r?d?r.

Can freedom become a burden, too heavy for man to bear, something he tries to escape from?

Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. 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. If I love the other person, I feel one with him or her, but with him as he is, not as I need him to be as an object for my use. It is clear that respect is possible only if I have achieved independence; if I can stand and walk without needing crutches, without

La gente cree que lo importante es tener éxito, ganar prestigio, conseguir poder, subir por la escala social, servir a la máquina, pero la persona queda estancada. En realidad, más que estancada, empeora ligeramente. Cumplidos los 25 años, ya no se perfeccionan, sino que degeneran, aunque mejoren en el arte de ganar dinero y manipular a los demás. (...) El arte de escuchar

But man is not only made by history—history is made by man.

The more man gains freedom in the sense of emerging from the original oneness with man and nature and the more he becomes an 'individual,' he has no choice but to unite himself with the world in the spontaneity of love and productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the world that destroys his freedom and the integrity of his individual self.

Indeed, with the experience of self disappears the experience of identity - and when this happens, man could become insane if he did not save himself by acquiring a secondary sense of self; he does that by experiencing himself as being approved of, worthwhile, successful, useful - briefly, as a salable commodity which is he because he is looked upon by others as an entity, not unique but fitting into one of the current patterns.

We are terribly imaginative, as far as technique in science is concerned. As far as changes in social arrangements are concerned, we lack utterly in imagination.

The manual worker does not have to sell his personality. He doesn't have to sell his smile.

We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent - people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.

The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die.

Hate is a product of the unfulfilled life.

The duty to be alive is the same as the duty to become oneself, to develop into the individual one potentially is.

Independent of others and in concert with others, your main task in life is to do what you can best do and become what you can potentially be.

To see himself without illusions would not be so difficult for the individual, were he not constantly exposed to being brain-washed and deprived of the faculty of critical thinking. He is made to think and feel things that he would not feel or think, were it not for uninterrupted suggestions and elaborate methods of conditioning.

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.

Human existence begins when the lack of fixation of action by instincts exceeds a certain point; when the adaptation to nature loses its coercive character; when the way to act is no longer fixed by hereditarily given mechanisms. In other words, human existence and freedom are from the beginning inseparable. Freedom is here used not in its positive sense of freedom to but in its negative sense of freedom from, namely freedom from instinctual determination of his actions.

The cruelty itself is motivated by something deeper: the wish to know the secret of things and of life.

Psychoanalysis is essentially a theory of unconscious strivings, of resistance, of falsification of reality according to one's subjective needs and expectations.