Quotes About Erich Fromm

This Marxian sentence, repeated to the point of boredom, is misinterpreted. In reality [Karl] Marx was a "religious" man.

The more the drive toward life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive toward destruction; the more life is realized, the less is the strength of destructiveness. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life.

Today the function of psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis threatens to become the tool in the manipulation of man.

The capacity to love demands a state of intensity, awakeness, enhanced vitality, which can only be the result of a productive and active orientation in many other spheres of life. If one is not productive in other spheres, one is not productive in love either.

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.

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

In other words, ideas can become powerful forces, but only to the extent to which they are answers to specific human needs prominent in a given social character.

Hope is a decisive element in any attempt to bring about social change in the direction of greater aliveness, awareness, and reason.

The doubt itself will not disappear as long as man does not overcome his isolation and as long as his place in the world has not become a meaningful one in terms of his human needs.

Psychology as a science has its limitations, and, as the logical consequence of theology is mysticism, so the ultimate consequence of psychology is love.

Man's nature, his passions, and anxieties are a cultural product; as a matter of fact, man himself is the most important creation and achievement of the continuous human effort, the record of which we call history.

Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called "equality." Union

while there are many good points in our society, many things if one wants, to be proud of, that it is at least very questionable whether the way of life in which we live right now is more conducive to mental health or to mental illness.

Marx's whole critique of capitalism and his vision of socialism are rooted in the concept that human self-activity is paralyzed in the capitalist system and that the goal is to restore full humanity by restoring activity in all spheres of life.

The starting point for these reflections is the statement that the character structure of the average individual and the socioeconomic structure of the society of which he or she is a part are interdependent.

The courage of despair is the opposite of the courage of love, just as the faith in power is the opposite of the faith in life.

Where the roots of Western culture … considered the aim of life the perfection of man, modern man is concerned with the perfection of things, and the knowledge of how to make them.

Sex no longer frightens people; it can no longer be used to develop a sense of guilt, and thereby to force submission.

The despair of the human automaton is fertile soil for the political purposes of Fascism.

Messianism is not accidental to man's existence but the inherent, logical answer to it—the alternative to man's self-destruction.

There is a sentence in the Old Testament which I think has some reference to our situation today. It says: "And you shall be cursed because thou did not serve thy God, in joy and gladness amidst the abundance of things." [Deuteronomium 28:47] We have an abundance of things but we serve them and without joy and gladness.

What matters is that new forms of propertylessness will do away with the sexual greed that is characteristic of all having societies.

Simultaneous love for authority and the hatred against those who are powerless are typical of the authoritarian character

sane society is that which corresponds to the needs of man—