Quotes from Erich Fromm

Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.

Authority is not a quality one person "has," in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him.

Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance of the individual voter.

Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one's identity.

Integrity simple means not violating one's own identity.

Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. "Patriotism" is its cult.

Boredom is nothing but the experience of a paralysis of our productive powers.

I am convinced that boredom is one of the greatest tortures. If I were to imagine Hell, it would be the place where you were continually bored.

Love is a union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of ones own self. It is an experience of sharing, or communing, which permits the full unfolding of ones own inner activity.

Socialism is the abolition of human self-alienation, the return of man as a real human being.

Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?

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

Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the very same time the beginning of his freedom and development of his reason.

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.

The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots.

It takes a moment to tell someone you love them, but it takes a lifetime to prove it.

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.

There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started out with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which fails so regularly, as love.

Man always dies before he is fully born.

Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.

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.

The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.

There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.

The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind - not the fiend or the sadist.