Quotes from Erich Fromm

Understanding a person does not mean condoning; it only means that one does not accuse him as if one were God or a judge placed above him.

By equality, one once understood equality in the very same sense in which the Bible speaks of equality: that we are all equal, inasmuch as we are created in the image of God.

It doesn't matter whether one uses God or doesn't. What matters is which experience a person has.

If you want a Big Brother, you get all that comes with it.

The essential difference between the unhappy, neurotic type person and him of great joy is the difference between get and give.

The affirmation of one's own life, happiness, growth and freedom, is rooted in one's capacity to love.

To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness

Happiness is a very proud word of our whole cultural heritage.

All genuine ideals have one thing in common: they express the desire for something which is not yet accomplished but which is desirable for the purpose of the growth and happiness of the individual.

Happiness today, I think, is for most people the satisfaction of the eternal suckling: to drink in more this, that, or the other.

Actually, if you take the average American, and studies have shown that, he is really concerned only with private affairs; that is to say, with his health, his money and family affairs.

Human history began with an act of disobedience and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.

The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology.

The member of a primitive clan might express his identity in the formula "I am we"; he cannot yet conceive of himself as an "individual," existing apart from his group.

There is only one reality: the act of feeling ourselves in the process of making choices.

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.

As we ascend the social ladder, viciousness wears a thicker mask.

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

We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.

If I am attached to another person because I cannot stand on my own two feet, he or she may be a life saver, but the relationship is not one of love.

When people can't handle God any more, they turn to religion.

Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with others, are refuges from what man most dreads: isolation.

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

Men are born equal but they are also born different.