Erich Fromm (1900–80) was a German-born American psychoanalyst, social philosopher, and author. He applied psychoanalysis to the study of peoples and cultures with an emphasis on the importance of interpersonal relationships in an impersonal, industrialized society.
Born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Fromm was educated at the universities of Frankfurt, Heidelberg, and Munich, and the Berlin Institute of Psychoanalysis. He immigrated to America in 1934, and, after maintaining numerous university assignments, became a professor at New York in 1962. He later expanded his views to integrate some of the principles of Zen Buddhism.
Fromm emphasized social, economic, and cultural factors on human behavior. He wrote extensively—for both the academic and the general reader—on topics ranging from sociology, anthropology, and ethics to religion, politics, and mythology. His works include Escape from Freedom (1941,) Man for Himself (1947,) Psychoanalysis and Religion (1951,) The Sane Society (1955,) Sigmund Freud’s Mission (1959,) and The Heart of Man (1964.)
Among Fromm’s other books are The Art of Loving (1956,) May Man Prevail? (1961; with D. T. Suzuki and Richard Dimartino,) Beyond the Chains of Illusion (1962,) The Revolution of Hope (1968,) and The Crisis of Psychoanalysis (1970.)
Fromm’s later work included The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973,) which developed his examination of human aggression.
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We are not only less reasonable and less decent in our dreams… we are also more inteligent, wiser and capable of better judgment when we are asleep than when we are awake.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Dreams
Let your mind start a journey thru 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
In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Present, The Present
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
Topics: Love
Love is an act of faith.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Romance
The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Security
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
Topics: Grief
Mother’s love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Motherhood, Mothers
Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Creativity
The capacity to be puzzled is … the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Creativity
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
Topics: Control, Authority
Man absolutely cannot live by himself.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Service
Today we come across an individual who behaves like an automaton, who does not know or understand himself, and the only person that he knows is the person that he is supposed to be, whose meaningless chatter has replaced communicative speech, whose synthetic smile has replaced genuine laughter, and whose sense of dull despair has taken the place of genuine pain. Two statements may be said concerning this individual. One is that he suffers from defects of spontaneity and individuality which may seem to be incurable. At the same time it may be said of him he does not differ essentially from the millions of the rest of us who walk upon this earth.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Individuality, Despair, Earth, Pain, Rest, Smile, Laughter
The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Wealth
The lack of objectivity, as far as foreign nations are concerned, is notorious. From one day to another, another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while ones own nation stands for everything that is good and noble. Every action of the enemy is judged by one standardevery action of oneself by another. Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals which they serve.
—Erich Fromm
Free man is by necessity insecure; thinking man by necessity uncertain.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Doubt, Realistic Expectations, Acceptance, Uncertainty
Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. “Patriotism” is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by “patriotism” I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one’s own nation, which is the concern with the nation’s spiritual as much as with its material welfare—never with its power over other nations. 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.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Patriotism, Nationalism
There is only one meaning of life, the act of living itself.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Simplicity, Simple Living, Goals, Aspirations
Man may be defined as the animal that can say “I,” that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Identity
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
Topics: Adversity, Life
Every society by its own practice of living and by the mode of relatedness, of feelings, and perceiving, develops a system of categories which determines the forms of awareness.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Society
Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Education
Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one’s identity.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Being Ourselves, Identity
Power on the one side, fear on the other, are always the buttresses on which irrational authority is built.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Authority
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Uncertainty, Creativity
I am convinced that boredom is one of the greatest tortures. If I were to imagine Hell, it would be the place where you were continually bored.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Boredom
A dream is a microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Dreams
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
Topics: Truth
There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by unfolding of his powers.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Purpose, Meaning
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
Topics: Romance
One of the worst forms of mental suffering is boredom, not knowing what to do with oneself and one’s life. Even if man had no monetary, or any other reward, he would be eager to spend his energy in some meaningful way because he could not stand the boredom which inactivity produces.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Boredom
In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Love
Man’s biological weakness is the condition of human culture.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Weakness
Immature love says: “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says: “I need you because I love you.”
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Love
We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Consumerism
Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Problems, Existence
That man can destroy life is just as miraculous a feat as that he can create it, for life is the miracle, the inexplicable. In the act of destruction, man sets himself above life; he transcends himself as a creature. 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
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
Topics: Reason
Boredom is nothing but the experience of a paralysis of our productive powers.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Boredom
The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. But given man’s nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become Golems,” they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life.”
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Future, The Future
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