Quotes by Erich Fromm

About Erich Fromm:

Erich Seligmann Fromm was a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory.
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The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots.

Erich Fromm

In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.

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

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

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

Erich Fromm

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

Erich Fromm

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

Erich Fromm
Love quotes by Erich Fromm, UberQuotes

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

Erich Fromm

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

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

Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.

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

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

Erich Fromm

Just as love is an orientation which refers to all objects and is incompatible with the restriction to one object, so is reason a human faculty which must embrace the whole of the world with which man is confronted.

Erich Fromm

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

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.

Erich Fromm

Sanity is only that which is within the frame of reference of conventional thought.

Erich Fromm

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

Erich Fromm

Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.

Erich Fromm

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.

Erich Fromm

To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.

Erich Fromm

Author Bio

  • NameErich Fromm
  • DescriptionGerman social psychologist and psychoanalyst
  • BornMarch 23, 1900
  • DiedMarch 18, 1980
  • CountryGermany
  • ProfessionPsychologist; Philosopher
  • AwardsHumanist Of The Year