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
above attitude concern country form hardly humanity individual interest love loving material mean nation necessary others patriotism power principles puts spiritual truth welfare
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.
fear power men
The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind - not the fiend or the sadist.
powerful father acceptance
When the theory of evolution destroyed the picture of God as the supreme Creator, confidence in God as the all-powerful Father of man fell with it, although many were able to combine a belief in God with the acceptance of the Darwinian theory.
life power men
There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.
love lying power
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.
powerful book ideas
Ideas become powerful only if they appear in the flesh; an idea which does not lead to action by the individual and by groups remains at best a paragraph or a footnote in a book.
block power men
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
powerful men machines
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.
frame reference sanity within
Sanity - that which is within the frame of reference of conventional thought
begin book half imagine incomplete lack love today understand volumes
Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists.... When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.
eyes journey knew leave lived mind soul spirit start strange thoughts
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.
acted contains envy feeling guise hate perhaps permits phenomenon virtue
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
acted contains envy feeling guise hate perhaps permits phenomenon virtue
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
except gives life man meaning unfolding
There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives to his life by the unfolding of his powers.