― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his "normal" contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society. In the process of going further in his analysis, i.e. of growing to greater independence and productivity,his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves.”
― Erich Fromm
“Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.”
― Erich Fromm
“If other people do not understand our behavior—so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being "asocial" or "irrational" in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them. How many lives have been ruined by this need to "explain," which usually implies that the explanation be "understood," i.e. approved. Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds, your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself—to his reason and his conscience—and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being
“Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”
― Erich Fromm
“Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an ordination of character which determines the relatedness of the person to the whole world as a whole, not toward one object of love”
― Erich Fromm
“Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.”
― 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
“One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.”
― Erich Fromm
“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”
― Erich Fromm
“It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas and feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consensual validation as such has no bearing on reason or mental health.”
― Erich Fromm
“Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.”
― Erich Fromm
“That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.”
― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society
“Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our
insanity. 'Patriotism' is its cult... Just as love for one
individual which excludes the love for others is not love,
love for one's country which is not part of one's love
for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.”
“There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as 'moral indignation,' which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.”
― Erich Fromm, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics
“The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers. ”
― Erich Fromm
“Man’s main task is to give birth to himself. ”
― Erich Fromm
“Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men and from nature. His main aim is profitable exchange of his skills, knowledge, and of himself, his "personality package" with others who are equally intent on a fair and profitable exchange. Life has no goal except the one to move, no principle except the one of fair exchange, no satisfaction except the one to consume.p97.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity.”
― Erich Fromm
“Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort.”
― Erich Fromm
“The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.”
― Erich Fromm
“Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.”
― Erich Fromm
“Freedom is not a constant attribute which we either "have" or "have not." In fact, there is no such thing as "freedom" except as a word and an abstract concept. There is only one reality: the act of freeing ourselves in the process of making choices. In this process the degree of our capacity to make choices varies with each act, with our practice of life.”
― Erich Fromm, El Corazon del Hombre: Su Potencia Para el Bien y Para el Mal
“Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies”
― Erich Fromm
“What does one person give to another? He gives of himself, of the most precious he has, he gives of his life. This does not necessarily mean that he sacrifices his life for the other - but that he gives him of that which is alive in him; he gives him of his joy, of his interest, of his understanding, of his knowledge, of his humor, of his sadness -- of all expressions and manifestations of that which is alive in him. In thus giving of his life, he enriches the other person, he enhances the other's sense of aliveness by enhancing his own sense of aliveness. He does not give in order to receive; giving is in itself exquisite joy. But in giving he cannot help bringing something to life in the other person, and this which is brought to life reflects back to him.”
― Erich Fromm
“The mature response to the problem of existence is love.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.”
― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society
“Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking processes attempt to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of plausibility. This level of consciousness is supposed to reflect reality; it is the map we use for organizing our life.”
― Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? The Nature of the Psyche
“Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total… Man has created a world of man-made things as it never existed before. He has constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine he built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces are which he unleashes, the more powerless he feels himself as a human being. He is owned by his creations, and has lost ownership of himself.”
― Erich Fromm
“Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous. Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“The faculty to think objectively is reason; the emotional attitude behind reason is that of humility. To be objective, to use one's reason, is possible only if one has achieved an attitude of humility, if one has emerged from the dreams of omniscience and omnipotence which one has as a child. Love, being dependent on the relative absence of narcissism, requires the developement of humility, objectivity and reason.
I must try to see the difference between my picture of a person and his behavior, as it is narcissistically distorted, and the person's reality as it exists regardless of my interests, needs and fears.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“There is nothing inhuman, evil, or irrational which does not give some comfort, provided it is shared by a group.”
― Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion
“In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.”
― Erich Fromm
“To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern – and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“if i am what i have, and i lose what i have, who then am i?”
― Erich Fromm
“Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.”
― Erich Fromm
“The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have.”
― Erich Fromm
“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.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
“Infantile love follows the principle: "I love because I am loved."
Mature love follows the principle: "I am loved because I love."
Immature love says: "I love you because I need you."
Mature love says: "I need you because I love you.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“Greedhas no satiation point, since its consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression it is meant to overcome.”
― Erich Fromm
“Reason flows from the blending of rational thought and feeling. If the two functions are torn apart, thinking deteriorates into schizoid intellectual activity and feeling deteriorates into neurotic life-damaging passions.”
― Erich Fromm
“Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love say: 'i need you because I love you.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“We should free ourselves from the narrowness of being related only to those familiar to us, either by the fact that they are blood relations or, in a larger sense, that we eat the same food, speak the same language, and have the same “ common sense.” Knowing men in the sense of compassionate and empathetic knowledge requires that we get rid of the narrowing ties of a given society, race or culture and penetrate to the depth of that human reality in which we are all nothing but human. True compassion and knowledge of man has been largely underrated as a revolutionary factor in the development of man, just as art has been. It is a noteworthy phenomenon that in the development of capitalism and its ethics, compassion (or mercy) ceases to be a virtue.”
― Erich Fromm, The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology
“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”
― Erich Fromm
“The pleasure in complete domination over another person (or other animate creature) is the very essence of the sadistic drive. Another way of formulating the same thought is to say that the aim of sadism is to transform man into a thing, something animate into something inanimate, since by complete and absolute control the living loses one essential quality of life - freedom.”
― Erich Fromm, El Corazon del Hombre: Su Potencia Para el Bien y Para el Mal
“Modern man thinks he loses something - time - when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains, except kill it.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“Wenn ich zu einem anderen sagen kann: "Ich liebe dich", muss ich auch sagen können: "Ich liebe in dir auch alle anderen, ich liebe durch dich die ganze Welt, ich liebe in dir auch mich selbst.”
― Erich Fromm, Die Kunst des Liebens
“We may know ourselves, and yet even with all the efforts we make, we do not know ourselves. We know our fellowman, and yet we do not know him, because we are not a thing, and our fellowman is not a thing. The further we reach into the depths of our being, on someone else's being, the more the goal of knowledge eludes us.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“Critical and radical thought will only bear fruit when it is blended with the most precious quality man is endowed with - the love of life”
― Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness
“Education is identical with helping the child realize his potentialities. The opposite of education is manipulation, which is based on the absence of faith in the growth of potentialities and the connection that a child will be right only if the adults put into him what is desirable and suppress what seems to be undesirable.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die.”
― Erich Fromm
“. . . freedom to creat and construct, to wonder and to venture. Such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible, not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine . . . It is not enough that men are not slaves; if social conditions further the existence of automatons, the result will not be love of life, but love of death.”
― Erich Fromm, El Corazon del Hombre: Su Potencia Para el Bien y Para el Mal
“Freedom does not mean license.”
― Erich Fromm
“Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Love is not a spontaneous feeling, a thing that you fall into, but is something that requires thought, knowledge, care, giving, and respect. And it is something that is rare and difficult to find in capitalism, which commodifies human activity. ”
― Erich Fromm
“There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feelings as “moral indignation,” which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue. The “indignant” person has for once the satisfaction of despising and treating a creature as “inferior,” coupled with the feeling of his own superiority and rightness.”
― Erich Fromm
“Thus, the ultimate choice for a man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate.”
― 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
“...in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power-almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving.
Could it be that only those things are considered worthy of being learned with which one can earn money or prestige, and that love, which "only" profits the soul, but is profitless in the modern sense, is a luxury we have no right to spend energy on?”
― Erich Fromm
“If I am what I have, and if I lose what I have, who then am I?”
― Erich Fromm
“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality. ”
― Erich Fromm
“Modern capitalism needs men who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority or principle or conscience-- yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected of them, to fit into the social machine without friction; who can be guided without force, led without leaders, prompted without aim-- except the one to make good, to be on the move, to function, to go ahead.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“We forget that, although freedom of speech constitutes an important victory in the battle against old restraints, modern man is in a position where much of what "he" thinks and says are the things that everybody else thinks and says; that he has not acquired the ability to think originally - that is, for himself - which alone gives meaning to his claim that nobody can interfere with the expression of his thoughts.”
― Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom
“If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can be validated.”
― Erich Fromm, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics
“Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be. Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar, and you’ll live as you’ve never lived before.”
― Erich Fromm
“People do not see that the main question is not : "Am I loved?" which is to a large extent the question : "Am I approved of? Am I protected? Am I admired?" The main question is: "Can I love?”
― Erich Fromm, Love, Sexuality and Matriarchy: About Gender
“We all dream; we do not understand our dreams, yet we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sleep minds, strange at least by comparison with the logical, purposeful doings of our minds when we are awake.”
― Erich Fromm
“There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.”
― Erich Fromm, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics
“Love is an act of faith.”
― Erich Fromm
“Beyond the element of giving, the active characteristic of love becomes evident in the fact that it always implies certain basic elements, common to all forms of love. These are care, responsability, respect and knowledge”
― Erich Fromm
“If the meaning of life has become doubtful, if one's relations to others and to oneself do not offer security, then fame is one means to silence one's doubts. It has a function to be compared with that of the Egyptian pyramids or the Christian faith in immortality: it elevates one's individual life from its limitations and instability to the plane of indestructability; if one's name is known to one's contemporaries and if one can hope that it will last for centuries, then one's life has meaning and significance by this very reflection of it in the judgments of others.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
“We are what we do.”
― Erich Fromm
“We forget that, although each of the liberties which have been won must be defended with utmost vigour, the problem of freedom is not only a quantitative one, but a qualitative one; that we not only have to preserve and increase the traditional freedom, but that we have to gain a new kind of freedom, one which enables us to realize our own individual self; to have faith in this self and in life.”
― Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom
“Our contemporary Western society, in spite of its material, intellectual and political progress, is increasingly less conducive to mental health, and tends to undermine the inner security, happiness, reason and the capacity for love in the individual; it tends to turn him into an automaton who pays for his human failure with increasing mental sickness, and with despair hidden under a frantic drive for work and so called pleasure.”
― Erich Fromm
“Take for instance a man driven to incessant work by a sense of deep insecurity and loneliness; or another one driven by ambition, or greed for money. In all these cases the person is the slave of a passion, and his activity is in reality a "passivity" because he is driven; he is the sufferer, not the "actor." On the other hand a man sitting quiet and contemplating, with no purpose or aim except that of experiencing himself and his oneness with the world, is considered to be "passive", because he is not "doing" anything. In reality, this attitude of concentrated meditation is the highest activity there is, an activity of the soul, which is possible only under the condition of inner freedom and independence.”
― Erich Fromm
“If I love the other person, I feel one with him or her, but with him as he is, not as I need him to be as an object for my use. Respect thus implies the absence of exploitation: it allows the other to be, to change and to develop 'in his own ways.' This requires a commitment to know the other as a separate being, and not merely as a reflection of my own ego. According to Velleman this loving willingness and ability to see the other as they really are is foregrounded in our willingness to risk self-exposure.”
― Erich Fromm
“Hanya ada satu kepastian, yaitu kepastian tentang masa lampau. Sedangkan tentang masa depan, yang ada hanyalah kepastian tentang kematian”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“Die meisten Menschen sehen das Problem der Liebe in erster Linie als das Problem, selbst geliebt zu werden, statt zu lieben und lieben zu können.”
― Erich Fromm, Die Kunst des Liebens
“The anxiety engendered by confronting the abyss of nothingness [of the loss of self] is more terrifying than the tortures of hell. In the vision of hell, I am punished and tortured—In the vision of nothingness I am driven to the border of madness—because I cannot say ‘I’ any more.”
― Erich Fromm
“I think that the word bored does not get the attention it deserves. We speak of all sorts of terrible things that happen to people, but we rarely speak about one of the most terrible things of all : that is, being bored, being bored alone and, worse than that, being bored together.”
― Erich Fromm, Love, Sexuality and Matriarchy: About Gender
“TO ACCEPT THE DIFFICULTIES,SETBACKS AND TRAGEDIES OF LIFE AS A CHALLENGE WHICH TO OVERCOME MAKES US STRONGER, RATHER THAN AS SOMETHING THAT SHOULD NOT HAPPEN TO US REQUIRES FAITH AND COURAGE”
― Erich Fromm
“Human beings had two basic orientations: HAVING and BEING
HAVING: seeks to acquire, posses things even people
BEING: focuses on the experience; exchanging, engaging, sharing with other people”
― Erich Fromm
“There is no word in our language which has been so much misused and prostituted as the word love. It has been preached by those who were ready to condone every cruelty if it served their purpose; it has been used as a disguise under which to force people into sacrificing their own happiness, into submitting their whole self to those who profited from this surrender. [...] It has been made so empty that for many people love may mean no more than that two people have lived together for twenty years just without fighting more often than once a week.”
― Erich Fromm, Love, Sexuality and Matriarchy: About Gender
“...Today the lack of faith is an expression of profound confusion and despair. Once skepticism and rationalism were progressive forces for the development of thought; now they have become rationalizations for relativism and uncertainty.”
― Erich Fromm, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics
“Among the many forms of alienation, the most frequent one is alienation in language. If I express a feeling with a word, let us say, if I say "I love you," the word is meant to be an indication of the reality which exists within myself, the power of my loving. The word "love" is meant to be a symbol of the fact love, but as soon as it is spoken it tends to assume a life of its own, it becomes a reality. I am under the illusion that the saying of the word is the equivalent of the experience, and soon I say the word and feel nothing, except the thought of love which the word expresses. The alienation of language shows the whole complexity of alienation. Language is one of the most precious human achievements; to avoid alienation by not speaking would be foolish -- yet one must be always aware of the danger of the spoken word, that it threatens to substitute itself for the living experience. The same holds true for all other achievements of man; ideas, art, any kind of man-made objects. They are man's creations; they are valuable aids for life, yet each one of them is also a trap, a temptation to confuse life with things, experience with artifacts, feeling with surrender and submission.”
― Erich Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man
“Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person: it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not towards one 'object' of love.”
― Erich Fromm
“The source of irrational authority, on the other hand, is always power over people. This power can be physical or mental, it can be realistic or only relative in terms of the anxiety and helplessness of the person submitting to this authority. Power on the one side, fear on the other, are always the buttresses on which irrational authority is built. Criticism of the authority is not only required but forbidden. Rational authority is based upon the equality of both authority and subject, which differ only with respect to the degree of knowledge of skill in a praticular field. Irrational authority is by its very nature based on inequality, implying difference in value.”
― Erich Fromm, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics
“Today the function of psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis threatens to become the tool in the manipulation of man.”
― Erich Fromm
“[E]thical principles stand above the existence of the nation and that by adhering to these principles an individual belongs to the community of all those who share, who have shared, and who will share this belief.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
“ان اهم مجال للإعطاء ليس هو مجال الأشياء المادية, بل هو المجال الذي يكمن في العالم الانساني بصفة خاصة. فماذا يعطي الانسان للآخر ؟ انه يعطي من نفسه, من أثمن ما يملك, انه يعطي حياته. وليس هذا يعني بالضرورة انه يضحي بحياته للآخر-بل انه يعني انه يعطيه من ذلك الشيء الحي فيه, انه يعطيه من فرحه, من شغفه, من فهمه, من علمه, من مرحه, من حزنه- من كل التعابير والتجليات لذلك الشيء الحي الذي فيه. وهكذا باعطائه من حياته انما يثري الشخص الآخر بالحياة وذلك بتعزيزه لشعوره هو بالحياة. انه لا يعطي لكي يتلقى, العطاء هو ذاته فرح رفيع. ولكنه في العطاء لا يملك الا أن يحمل شيئا الى الحياة في الشخص الآخر, وذلك الذي يحمله الى الحياة ينعكس بالتالي عليه, انه العطاء الحقيقي لا يملك الا أن يتلقى ما يعود اليه ثانية. العطاء يتضمن جعل الشخص الآخر شخصا معطاء أيضا والاثنان يشتركان في فرح ما قد حملاه الى الحياة. في فعل العطاء يولد شيء ما, وكلا الشخصين يكونان شاكرين للحياد التي تولد لهما كليهما. ويعني هذا بالنسبة للحب اذا شئنا التخصيص: ان الحب قوة تنتج الحب, والعقم هو العجز عن انتاج الحب.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled, to concentrate, to accept conflict and tension, to be born every day, to feel a sense of self.”
― Erich Fromm
“Si percibo en otra persona nada más que lo superficial, percibo principalmente las diferencias, lo que nos separa. Si penetro hasta el núcleo, percibo nuestra identidad, el hecho de nuestra hermandad.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“أصبح إنسان اليوم يتصرف مثل الإنسان الآلي الذي لا يعرف نفسه ولا يفهمها، والشخص الوحيد الذي يعرفه هو الشخص الذي من المفترض أن يكون عليه، والذي حلت لديه الدردشة عديمة المعنى محل الحديث التواصلي، وحلت ابتسامته المصطنعة محل الضحكة الراقية التي تخرج من القلب، واستبدل الألم الراقي بإحساس من اليأس الممل. وهناك عبارتان يمكن وصف هذا الفرد بهما؛ الأولى أنه يعاني من عيوب في التعامل بتلقائية وعيوب في شخصيته والتي تبدو غير قابلة للعلاج، وفي نفس الوقت يمكن القول إنه لا يختلف اختلافًا أساسيًا عن ملايين البشر الذين يعج بهم الكون.”
― Erich Fromm
“Most people are not even aware of their need to conform. They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individualists, that they have arrived at their opinion as the result of their own thinking - and that it just happens that their ideas are the same as this of the majority. (p.11)”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“One is not loved accidentally; one’s own power to love produces love - just as being interested makes one interesting. People are concerned with the question of whether they are attractive while they forget that the essence of attractiveness is their own capacity to love. To love a person productively implies to care and to feel responsible for his life, not only for his physical existence but for the growth and development of all his human powers. To love productively is incompatible with being passive, with being an onlooker at the loved person’s life; it implies labor and care and the responsibility for his growth.”
― Erich Fromm, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics
“If I perceive in another person mainly the surface, I perceive mainly the differences,that which separates us. If I penetrate to the core, i perceive our identity, the fact of our brotherhood. This relatedness from center to center - instead of that from periphery to periphery - is 'central relatedness'.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“La raison découle du mélange de la pensée rationnelle et des sentiments. Si les deux fonctions se dissocient, la pensée se détériore en activité intellectuelle schizoïde et les sentiments en passions névrotiques autodestructrices. ”
― Erich Fromm
“ان مشكلة معرفة الانسان مماثلة للمشكلة الدينية الخاصة بمعرفة الله. في اللاهوت الغربي التقليدي تبذل المحاولة لمعرفة الله بالفكر, والادلاء بعبارات عن الله. ان هذا اللاهوت يفترض انني استطيع ان اعرف الله في فكري. وفي التصوف الذي هو المحصلة المترتبة على الوحدانية او التوحيد فان المحاولة لمعرفة الله عن طريق الفكر يجري الاقلاع عنها, وتحل محلها تجربة الاتحاد بالله حيث لا تعود هناك ضرورة- ولاحاجة- لمعرفة شيء عن الله.
ان تجربة الوحدة او الاتحاد بالانسان, او بالله اذا تحدثنا على نحو ديني ليست تجربة لا عقلانية. بل بالعكس, انها على نحو ما نوه البرت شفايتزر نتيجة العقلانية, انها نتيجتها الجرئية والمتطرفة للغاية. انها قائمة على معرفة محدوديات معرفتنا الرئيسية لا العرضية. انها المعرفة بأننا لن نستحوذ مطلقا على سر الانسان والكون, ولكننا مع هذا نستطيع ان نعرف في فعل الحب. ان علم النفس كعلم له حدوده, وكما ان النتيجة المنطقية للاهوت في التصوف لان النتيجة القصوى لعلم النفس هي الحب.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“الحب الاخوي هو حب بين اثنين متساويين, ولكن حتى لو كنا متساوين حقا فاننا لسنا "متساوين" دائما, وذلك بقدر ما نحن بشر فاننا جميعا محتاجون الى المساعدة. اليوم أنا وغدا أنت. لكن هذه الحاجة الى المساعدة لا تعني أن الواحد عاجز والآخر قوي. العجز حالة مؤقتة, فالقدرة على الوقوف والمشي على القدمين هي الحالة الدائمة والشائعة.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“تعتمد قوة موقع الإنسان في الحياة على درجة كفاءة إدراكه للواقع, وكلما نقصت كفائته يزداد تشوشه وبالتالي يتنامى شعوره بعدم الأمان, فيصبح بحاجة إلى أوهام يتكئ عليها ليجد الامان الذي ينشده. وكلما ازدادت كفائته تزداد إمكانيته في الوقوف على قدميه وإيجاد جوهره داخل ذاته.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being
“يهم أن نعرف أيَّ نوعٍ من الوحدة نتحدث عنه عندما نتحدث عن الحب: هل نشير إلى الحب كحلٍّ ناضج لمشكلة الوجود؟ أم أننا نتكلم عن تلك الأشكال غير الناضجة للحب التي يمكن أن تُسمى وحدة تكافلية؟”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“The intensity and excitement which accompanies moments of infatuation is frequently relative to the degree of loneliness and isolation which has been previously experienced.”
― Erich Fromm
“If I am what I have, and if I lose what I have, who them am I?”
― Erich Fromm
“The question is the same, for it springs from the same ground: the human situation, the conditions of the human existence. The answer varies. The question can be answered by animal worship, by human scrifice or military conquest, by indulgence in luxury, by ascetic renunciation, by obsessionnal work, by artistic creation, by the love of God, and by the love of Man.”
― Erich Fromm
“Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness.”
― Erich Fromm
“ليس في الحب وحده يكون العطاء معناه التلقي، فالمدرس يتعلم من تلامذته والممثل يستثيره جمهوره والمحلل النفسي يُشفى على يد مريضه - بشرط ألا يعامل الواحد منهم الآخرين على أنه أشياء، بل على أن كل واحدٍ منهم مرتبط بالآخر على نحو أصيل ومثمر.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“Sanity - that which is within the frame of reference of conventional thought.”
― Erich Fromm
“[Der Mensch] würde dem Wahnsinn verfallen, wenn er sich nicht aus diesem Gefängnis befreien könnte - wenn er nicht in irgendeiner Form seine Hände nach anderen Menschen ausstrecken und sich mit der Welt außerhalb seiner selbst vereinigen könnte.”
― Erich Fromm, Die Kunst des Liebens
“Die heutige Gesellschaft predigt das Ideal einer nicht-individualisierten Gleichheit, weil sie menschliche Atome braucht, die sich untereinander völlig gleichen, damit sie im Massenbetrieb glatt und reibungslos funktionieren, damit alle den gleichen Anweisungen folgen und jeder trotzdem überzeugt ist, das zu tun, was er will. Genauso wie die moderne Massenproduktion die Standardisierung der Erzeugnisse verlangt, so verlangt auch der gesellschaftliche Prozess die Standardisierung des Menschen, und diese Standardisierung nennt man dann "Gleichheit".”
― Erich Fromm, Die Kunst des Liebens
“Man schließt zu zweit einen Bund gegen die Welt und hält dann diesen égoisme à deux irrtümlich für Liebe und Vertrautheit.”
― Erich Fromm, Die Kunst des Liebens
“The task of the moral philosopher-thinker is to support and strengthen the voice of human conscience, to recognize what is good or what is bad for people, whether they are good or bad for society in a period of evolution. May be a "voice crying in the wilderness", but only if that voice remains lively and uncompromising, it is possible to transform the desert into fertile land.”
― Erich Fromm, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics
“Aztán az ember észre fogja venni azt, hogy noha tudatosan attól fél, hogy nem szeretik, igazából, bár rendszerint öntudatlanul, szeretni fél. Szeretni annyi, mint feltétel nélkül rábízni magunkat valakire, teljesen odaadni magunkat abban a reményben, hogy szeretetünk majd szeretetet hoz létre a szeretett személyben is. A szeretet hitből származó cselekedet, és akiben kevés a hit, abban kevés a szeretet is.”
― Erich Fromm, Art of Loving: An Enquiry Into the Nature of Love
“الفعل الجنسي بدون حب لا يقيم جسوراً على الإطلاق فوق الهوة بين كائنين إنسانيين إلا لبضعة لحظات”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“گرانبهاترین سرمایه انسان و محکمترین پایه قدرت او چیزی جز شخصیت او نیست”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“كلما ضعفت ذات المرء تتعاظم خشيته من فقدانها أثناء التركيز على ماهو ليس ذاته.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being
“Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved , rather than that of loving , of one's capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable. In pursuit of this aim they follow several paths. One, which is especially used by men, is to be successful, to be as powerful and rich as the social margin of one's position permits. Another, used especially by women, is to make oneself attractive, by cultivating one's body, dress, etc. .... Many of the ways to make oneself lovable are the same as those used to make oneself successful, to 'win friends and influence people'. As a matter of fact, what most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“To be loved because of one's merit, because one deserves it, always leaves doubt; maybe I did not please the person whom I want to love me, maybe this, or that - there is always a fear that love could disappear.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“Today I, tomorrow you. But this need of help does not mean that the one is helpless, the other powerful. Helplesness is a transitory condition; the ability to stand and walk on one's own feet is the permanent and common one”
― Erich Fromm
“Existuje ještě jeden další rozdíl mezi logikou zjevného a skrytého vyprávění. Ve zjevném vyprávění existuje logická kauzální souvislost mezi vnějšími událostmi. Jonáš chce plout přes moře, protože chce utéci před Bohem, usne, protože je unaven, je vržen přes palubu, protože je považován za příčinu bouře a je pozřen rybou, protože se v moři vyskytují dravé ryby. Jedna událost vyplývá z předcházející. (Poslední část příběhu je sice nerealistická, ale nikoliv nelogická.) Ve skrytém příběhu naproti tomu vládne jiný druh logiky. Různé události jsou asociací spojeny se stejným vnitřním zážitkem. To, co se jeví jako kauzální posloupnost vnějších událostí, vlastně zastupuje spojení zážitků propojených jako události vnitřní. Je to právě tak logické, jako je logický zjevný příběh, ale jede tu o jiný druh logiky.”
― Erich Fromm, Mýtus, sen a rituál
“Society must be organized in such a way that man's social, loving nature is not separated from his social existence, but becomes one with it. If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature.”
― Erich Fromm
“كذلك يختل ميزان الثقافة فى كل مكان، فمازال عدد الأميين والجهلاء كثيراً لا يحصى. ولدينا من أدوات التثقيف الإذاعة والتلفزيون ودور السينما والصحف اليومية. بيد أن هذه الأدوات بدلاً من أن تنشر بين الناس روائع الأدب القديم والحديث، والعلم الصحيح، والموسيقى الرفيعة، تملأ الرؤوس عن طريق السمع والبصر بسخافات المعرفة وتوافع الأمور، وتنفث سمومها فى العقول والأذهان.”
― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society
“Naces solo y mueres solo, y en el paréntesis la soledad es tan grande que necesitas compartir la vida para olvidarlo.”
― Erich Fromm
“..فالسمة الأساسية للطبيعة الإنسانية هي مقدرتها على معرفة ذاتها ومعرفة ما ليس منها، أو ما هو مختلف عنها. وما أن يعي الإنسان هذه الحقيقة حتى نعزل عن الطبيعة وبقية الكائنات، وهذا الإنعزال أو الإنفصال إذا نظرنا إليه من ناحيته الإيجابية يكون الحرية، أما من ناحيته السلبية فهو الإغتراب”
― Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? The Nature of the Psyche
“Der Mensch sieht sich - zu allen Zeiten und in allen Kulturen - vor das Problem der Lösung der einen und immer gleichen Frage gestellt: wie er sein Abgetrenntsein überwinden, wie er zur Vereinigung gelangen, wie er sein eigenes einzelnes Leben transzendieren und das Einswerden erreichen kann.”
― Erich Fromm, Die Kunst des Liebens
“[Erkenntnis] ist nur möglich, wenn ich mein eigenes Interesse transzendiere und den anderen so sehe, wie er wirklich ist.”
― Erich Fromm, Die Kunst des Liebens
“Selbst nach der Geburt unterscheidet sich das Kind kaum von dem, was es vor der Geburt war; es kann noch keinen Gegenstand erkennen, es ist sich seiner selbst und der Welt als etwas außerhalb von ihm Liegendes noch nicht bewusst.”
― Erich Fromm, Die Kunst des Liebens
“Das Denken kann uns nur zur Erkenntnis führen, dass es selsbt uns die letzte Antwort nicht geben kann.”
― Erich Fromm, Die Kunst des Liebens
“Die Idee, dass man die Wahrheit auf dem Weg des Denkens finden könne, führt nicht nur zum Dogma, sondern auch zur Wissenschaft.”
― Erich Fromm, Die Kunst des Liebens
“Sólo existe certeza con respecto al pasado, y con respecto al futuro, la certeza de la muerte.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“Also in contemporary Western society the union with the group is the prevalent way of overcoming separateness. It is a union which the individual self disappears to a large extent, and where the aim is to belong to the heard. If I am like everybody else, if I have no feeling or thoughts which make me different, if I conform in custom, dress, ideas, to the pattern of the group, I am saved: saved from the frightening experience of aloneness.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“Aliveness always makes a beautiful.”
― Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? The Nature of the Psyche
“Attenti a non ridurre l'igiene mentale alla semplice prevenzione dei sintomi. I sintomi, in quanto tali, sono per noi non nemici, ma amici; dov'è un sintomo, là è conflitto, e conflitto significa sempre che le forze vitali lottano ancora per l'integrazione e la felicità”
― Erich Fromm
“Der Anpassungstheorie liegen folgende Annahmen zugrunde: 1. Jede Gesellschaft als soche ist normal; 2. seelisch krann ist, wer von dem von der Gesellschaft favorisierten Persönlichkeitstyp abweicht; 3. das Gesundheitswesen im Bereich von Psychiatrie udn Psychotherapie verfolgt das Ziel, den einzelnen auf das Niveau des Durchschnittschmenschen zu bringen, unabhängig davon, ob dieser blind ist oder nicht blind.”
― Erich Fromm, La Patología de la normalidad
“We have seen, then, that certain socioeconomic changes, notably the decline of the middle class and the rising power of monopolistic capital, had a deep psychological effect... Nazism resurrected the lower middle class psychologically while participating in the destruction of its old socioeconomic position. It mobilized its emotional energies to become an important force in the struggle for the economic and political aims of Germain imperialism.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
“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.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“Ao relacionar-se com o mundo objetivo, por intermédio de suas faculdades, o mundo exterior torna-se real para o homem, e de fato é só o “amor” que faz o homem verdadeiramente crer na realidade do mundo objetivo a ele extrínseco. Sujeito e objeto não podem ser separados . “O olho transformou-se em olho humano quando seu objeto se converteu em um objeto humano, social, criado pelo homem e a este destinado... Eles [os sentidos] se relacionam com a coisa devido a esta, mas a coisa em si mesma é uma relação humana objetiva para si própria e para o homem, e vice-versa. A necessidade e o gozo perderam, assim, seu caráter egoísta, e a natureza perdeu sua mera utilidade pelo fato de sua utilização ter-se transformado em utilização humana. (Com efeito, só posso relacionar-me de maneira humana com uma coisa quando esta se relaciona de maneira humana com o homem)”
Esta última afirmação é quase exatamente a mesma feita no pensamento do budismo Zen, assim como por Goethe. De fato o pensamento de Goethe, Hegel e Marx se acha intimamente ligado ao do Zen. O que há de comum neles é a ideia do homem superar a cisão entre sujeito e objeto; o objeto é um objeto, mas no entanto cessa de ser objeto , e nesta nova abordagem o homeme se funde com o objeto, conquanto ele e o objeto continuem a ser dois. O homem ao relacionar-se humanamente com o mundo objetivo, supera a alienação de si mesmo.”
― Erich Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man
“Psychoanalysis is essentially a theory of unconscious strivings, of resistance, of falsification of reality according to one's subjective needs and expectations.”
― Erich Fromm
“إن الأمر بحاجة إلى بحث عميق وتحليل دقيق لكى ننفذ إلى الحقيقة ونحكم على أنفسنا حكما أقرب إلى الصواب.”
― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society
“إننا لا ننكر أن الإنسانية وسط هذا الضجيج والعجيج لا تعدم نفراً من العقلاء بنادون بعقد معاهدات الصلح ونشر ألوية السلام فى ربوع العالم بأسره. غير أن قصارى ما يبذله هؤلاء العقلاء من جهد لا يعدو أن يكون كلمات مكتوبة وحبراً على ورق.”
― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society
“لعل من الطريف فى هذا الصدد أن نذكر هنا أن أحد المؤرخين الثقاة يؤكد لنا أنه فيما بين عام 1500 و 1860 بعد الميلاد وقعت الدول ما ينيف عن ثمانية آلاف معاهدة للصلح، تهدف كل منها إلى سيادة السلام الدائم بين الشعوب، ولم تدم واحدة منها أكثر من عامين !”
― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society
“إننا لا ننكر أن الإنسانية وسط هذا الضجيج والعجيج لا تعدم نفراً من العقلاء بنادون بعقد معاهدات الصلح ونشر ألوية السلام فى ربوع العالم بأسره. غير أن قصارى ما يبذله هؤلاء العقلاء من جهد لا يعدو أن يكون كلمات مكتوبة وحبراً على ورق. لعل من الطريف فى هذا الصدد أن نذكر هنا أن أحد المؤرخين الثقاة يؤكد لنا أنه فيما بين عام 1500 و 1860 بعد الميلاد وقعت الدول ما ينيف عن ثمانية آلاف معاهدة للصلح، تهدف كل منها إلى سيادة السلام الدائم بين الشعوب، ولم تدم واحدة منها أكثر من عامين !”
― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society
“Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one “object” of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet, most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“The experience of humanism is that 'nothing human is alien to me'; that I carry within myself all of humanity; that nothing which exists in any human being does not exist in myself. I am the criminal and the saint. I am the child and the adult. I am the man who lived 100000 years ago and the man who will live 100000 years from now.”
― Erich Fromm
“Das Wesentliche an der Existenz des Menschen ist ja, dass er sich über das Tierreich und seine instiktive Anpassung erhoben hat, dass er die Natur transzendiert hat, wenn er sie auch nie ganz verlässt.”
― Erich Fromm, Die Kunst des Liebens
“Die Entwicklung der patriarchalischen Gesellschaft geht Hand in Hand mit der Entwicklung des Privateigentums”
― Erich Fromm, Die Kunst des Liebens
“Man can only know the nagation, never the position of ultimate reality.”
― Erich Fromm
“Auf ihrer Suche nach der Einheit hinter der Mannigfaltigkeit kamen die brahmanischen Denker zu dem Schluss, dass das von ihnen wahrgenommene Gegensatzpaar nicht das Wesen der Dinge, sondern das Wesen des wahrnehmenden Geistes widerspiegelt. Das wahrnehmende Denken muss sich selbst transzendieren, um die wahre Wirklichkeit zu erreichen. Der Widerspruch ist eine Kategorie des menschlichen Geistes und nicht an und für sich ein Element der Wirklichkeit.”
― Erich Fromm, Die Kunst des Liebens
“Vernunft ist die Fähigkeit, objektiv zu denken. Die ihr zugrunde liegende Haltung ist die Demut.”
― Erich Fromm, Die Kunst des Liebens
“Love is a power which produces love.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“Die Liebe ist das Kind der Freiheit,
niemals der Beherrschung”
― Erich Fromm
“ماذا يعني أن يقوم شخص ما بتكييف حياته بشكل كامل باتجاه التملك؟
كائنا من يكون ذلك الذي يقوم بتوجيه حياته إلى التمل, فهو يحسم مسألة ماهيته وماهية وجوده ومعنى حياته وأسلوبه في الحياة بناء على مايملكه, ومالذي بإمكانه أن يملكه, او أن يملك المزيد منه”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being
“إن المعرفة بوجود الخراب والخداع والانانية واجبة, ليس فقط عندما تكون واضحة امامنا كالشمس, ولكن يجب علينا معرفتها حتى بأشكالها المختلفة المستترة ومبرراتها.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being
“لقد أصبح الكلام إدمانا: انا اتكلم إذا أنا موجود, أنا اتكلم إذا أنا لست نكرة, أنا أتكلم إذا لدي ماض, وعمل, وأسرة, وبحديثي عن كل ماسبق فإني أؤكد على ذاتي.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being
“مالفرق بين حرية النزوة وحرية الإرادة؟
إن النزوة هي أي رغبة تخرج عفويا, ودون أي صلة بنيوية مع الشخصية الكاملة وأهدافها”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being
“إن المعيار العام للنزوةهو أنها تجيب على السؤال: "ولم لا أفعل ذلك؟" وليس على السؤال: "لماذا أفعل ذلك؟”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being
“كلما تعاظم الشعور بالعجز وبنقص الإرادة الأصيل, كلما تنامى الخضوع أو الرغبة المهووسةبإرضاء نزوة المرء والإصرار على الاختيا.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being
“A questo modo due persone si innamorano, certe di aver trovato sul mercato l'oggetto migliore e più conveniente, considerando i limiti dei loro valori di scambio.”
― Erich Fromm
“The assumption that the problem of love is the problem of an object , not the problem of a faculty . People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love - or to be loved by- is difficult.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“The paradoxical situation with a vast number of people today is that they are half asleep when awake, and half awake when asleep, or when they want to sleep.”
― Erich Fromm
“Our whole culture is based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange. .... For the man an attractive girl - and for the woman an attractive man - are the prizes they are after. 'attractive' usually means a nice package of qualities which are popular and sought after on the personality market. What specifically makes a person attractive depends on the fashion of the time, physically as well as mentally. ... Two persons thus fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values.”
― Erich Fromm
“The only way of full knowledge lies in the act of love; this act transcends thought, it transcends words. It is the daring plunge into the experience of union.”
― Erich Fromm
“يحدث التغير في الوظيفة عندما يتوقف التملك عن كونه وسيلة للشعور بحيوية وإنتاجية أعظم, ويتحول إلى وسيلة للاستهلاك السلبي الحسي. عندما تكون وظيفة التملك الأساسية إرضاء حاجات الاستهلاك المتزايدة, فإنه (أي التملك) سيتوقف عن كونه حالة تضيف إلى "الكينونة", ولن يختلف عن "الامتلاك التوفيري".”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being
“Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one’s capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“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
“إن القضية المركزية هي فيما إذا كان الامتلاك يعزز الفعالية والحيوية لدى الفرد, أم يشل الفعالية ويعزز الكسل والخمول واللا إنتاجية.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being
“لشعور هو الحالة النفسية في حالة وجودنا الذي نشغل فيه بالعالم الخارجي بنحو عملي . و اللاشعور هو الخبرة النفسية في حالة وجودنا الذي قطعنا فيه كل الروابط مع العالم الخارجي ولم نعد نتوخى العمل أو النشاط و الفعالية و إنما نتفرغ لأنفسنا”
― Erich Fromm, الحكايات والأساطير والأحلام : مدخل إلى فهم لغة منسية
“The common element in both submission and domination is the symbiotic nature of relatedness. Both persons involved have lost their integrity and freedom; they live on each other and from each other, satisfying their craving for closeness, yet suffering from the lack of inner strength and self-reliance which would require freedom and independence, and furthermore constantly threatened by the conscious or unconscious hostility which is bound to arise from the symbiotic relationship.10 The realization of the submissive (masochistic) or the domineering (sadistic) passion never leads to satisfaction.”
― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society
“Fantazie a sny jsou začátkem mnoha skutků a nic by nebylo horší než je podceňovat a snícímu brát odvahu k nim. Jde o to, jaký druh fantazií máme - zda nás vedou vpřed, anebo zda nás drží v řetězech neproduktivnosti.”
― Erich Fromm, Mýtus, sen a rituál
“Masochista má - i když nevědomé - přání nehody, nemoci, ponížení. U masochistické perverze - kdy je toto přání sexuálně zabarveno a pro osobu méně nebezpečné - je toto masochistické přání dokonce vědomé.”
― Erich Fromm, Mýtus, sen a rituál
“Ma in molti individui per i quali, la solitudine non può essere superata in nessun modo, la ricerca dell'orgasmo sessuale assume una funzione che li rende non molto diversi da alcolizzati e dai tossicomani. Diventa un tentativo disperato di sfuggire all'ansia suscitata dal separazione e il suo risultato è un sempre crescente senso d'isolamento, poiché l'atto sessuale senza amore, non riempie mai il baratro che divide due creature umane, se non in modo assolutamente momentaneo.”
― Erich Fromm
“Musíme rozlišovat mezi obsahy myšlenkového procesu a logickými kategoriemi použitými myšlením. Zatímco se obsahy našeho bdělého myšlení nepodřizují omezením prostoru a času, mají kategorie logického myšlení prostorově-časovou povahu. Tak například mohu myslet na svého otce a zjistit, že jeho postoj v určité situaci je totožný s mým. Toto zjištění je logicky správné. Jesliže však tvrdím: "Já jsem svým otcem," pak je toto tvrzení "nelogické", protože neodpovídá pojmům fyzikálního světa. Z hlediska prožívání je však ta věta logická, neboť jí vyjadřuji své prožitky totožnosti se svým otcem. Logické myšlenky v bdělém stavu jsou podřízeny logickým kategorím, založeným na speciální formě existence, ve které přistupujeme k realitě v jednání. Ve spící existenci, která se vyznačuje nepřítomností dokonce i potenciálního jednání, se používají kategorie, které se vztahují k prožívání sebe sama. To platí i pro cítění. Jestliže se můj ci v bdělm stavu týká člověka, kterého jsem dvacet let neviděl, jsem si stále vědom faktu, že dotyčný není přítomen. Když o něm však sním, pak ho cítím tak, jako kdyby přítomen byl. Jestliže však říkám "jako kdyby přítomen byl", vyjadřuji tím svůj pocit v pojmech, které odpovídají "bdělému životu". Pro spící existenci neexistuje žádné "jako by"; příslušná osoba je přítomna.”
― Erich Fromm, Mýtus, sen a rituál
“Man represses the irrational passions of destructiveness, hate, envy, revenge; he worships power, money, the sovereign state, the nation; while he pays lip service to the teachings of the great spiritual leaders of the human race, those of Buddha, the prophets, Socrates, Jesus, Mohammed—he has transformed these teachings into a jungle of superstition and idol-worship. How can mankind save itself from destroying itself by this discrepancy between intellectual-technical overmaturity and emotional backwardness?”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
“Sin amor, la humanidad no podría existir un día mas.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
“Reason is man’s faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man’s ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man’s instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man’s instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.”
― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society
