Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
Erich Seligmann Frommwas a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPsychologist
Date of Birth23 March 1900
CountryUnited States of America
love family marriage
Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.
life creativity mean
Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies.
business inner-peace insecurity
The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.
romantic faith sweet
Love is an act of faith.
block power men
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
real men ego
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.
elude-us goal effort
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.
religious expression oneness
In the dominant Western religious system, the love of God is essentially the same as the belief in God, in God’s existence, God’s justice, God’s love. The love of God is essentially a thought experience. In the Eastern religions and in mysticism, the love of God is an intense feeling experience of oneness, inseparably linked with the expression of this love in every act of living.
life falling-in-love love-is
Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.
men numbers needs
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 ... what is the outcome? Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow man and from nature.
character simple order
A society whose principles are acquisition, profit, and property produces a social character oriented around having, and once the dominant pattern is established, nobody wants to be an outsider, or indeed an outcast; in order to avoid this risk everybody adapts to the majority, who have in common only their mutual antagonism.
children men years
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.
attitude children creative
What are the conditions of the creative attitude, of seeing and responding, of being aware and being sensitive to what one is aware of? First of all it requires the capacity to be puzzled. Children still have the capacity to be puzzled.
lonely suffering-of-others feelings
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.