Erich Fromm Quotes

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Erich Fromm

Profession : Psychologist

Birth : March 23, 1900

In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.

Erich Fromm

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.

Erich Fromm

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

Erich Fromm

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

Erich Fromm

The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man.

Erich Fromm

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

Erich Fromm

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

Erich Fromm

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.

Erich Fromm

To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.

Erich Fromm

Man always dies before he is fully born.

Erich Fromm

Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.

Erich Fromm

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.

Erich Fromm

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

Erich Fromm

Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.

Erich Fromm

The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.

Erich Fromm

There is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself.

Erich Fromm

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.

Erich Fromm

There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.

Erich Fromm

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.

Erich Fromm

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

Erich Fromm