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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The paradoxical and tragic situation of man is that his conscience is weakest when he needs it most.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Conscience
Man’s biological weakness is the condition of human culture.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Weakness
All genuine ideals have one thing in common: they express the desire for something which is not yet accomplished but which is desirable for the purpose of the growth and happiness of the individual.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Ideals
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
Topics: Equality
Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Appreciation, Defects, Blessings, Gratitude, Greed
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
Even if man’s hunger and thirst and his sexual strivings are completely satisfied, ‘he’ is not satisfied. In contrast to the animal his most compelling problems are not solved then, they only begin. He strives for power or for love, or for destruction, he risks his life for religious, for political, for humanistic ideals, and these strivings are what constitutes and characterizes the peculiarity of human life.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Mankind, Man
The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind—not the fiend or the sadist.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Power
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
As long as anyone believes that his ideal and purpose is outside him, that it is above the clouds, in the past or in the future, he will go outside himself and seek fulfillment where it cannot be found. He will look for solutions and answers at every point except where they can be found—in himself.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Discovery
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
Topics: Potential, Self-Discovery, Personality, Birth
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: Nationalism, Patriotism
Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one’s identity.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Being Ourselves, Identity
Mother’s love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Mothers, Motherhood
Love is an act of faith.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Romance
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
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
What most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Popularity
Free man is by necessity insecure; thinking man by necessity uncertain.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Realistic Expectations, Uncertainty, Acceptance, Doubt
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
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: Smile, Earth, Pain, Laughter, Rest, Individuality, Despair
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
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 love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Love
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
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
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
Topics: Time, Time Management, Value of Time
Power on the one side, fear on the other, are always the buttresses on which irrational authority is built.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Authority
Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies.
—Erich Fromm
Topics: Creativity
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
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