Quotes from Erich Fromm

If it is a virtue to love my neighbor as a human being, it must be a virtue - and not a vice - to love myself, since I am a human being too.

Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love.

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

Love is the child of freedom, never that of domination.

Love is hot a higher power which descends upon mn nor a duty which is imposed upon him; it is his own power by which he relates himself to the world and makes it truly his.

Productive work, love and thought are possible only if a person can be, when necessary, quiet and alone. To be able to listen to oneself is the necessary condition for relating oneself to others.

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

One cannot fall in love, really; one has to be in love.

I would say that love today is a relatively rare phenomenon, that we have a great deal of sentimentality; we have a great deal of illusion about love, namely as a... as something one falls in.

If an individual is able to love productively, he loves himself, too; if he can love only others, he cannot love at all.

I believe that the experience of love is the most human and humanizing act that it is given to man to enjoy and that it, like reason, makes no sense if conceived in a partial way.

Love is active penetration of the other person, in which my desire to know is stilled by union. In the act of fusion I know you, I know myself, I know everybody - and I "know" nothing.

People have committed suicide because of their failure to realize the passions for love , power , fame , revenge . Cases of suicide because of a lack of sexual satisfaction are virtually nonexistent.

If one is not productive in other spheres, one is not productive in the love either.

Erotic love begins with separateness, and ends in oneness. Motherly love begins with oneness, and leads to separateness.

Exclusive love is a contradiction in itself.

Mobilizing the love of life is the only force that can defeat the love for the dead.

Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.

I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself.

Ger-mans love the ambiguous word, verbal assonances as ends in themselves,vague concepts. Anglosaxons are more clear.

Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.

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

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

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