Quotes by Erich Fromm

27 quotes     Show as list

If it were not for hopes, the heart would break.
 
Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.
 
There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.
 
The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have.
 
In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.
 
The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
 
One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.
 
Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
 
Education makes machines which act like men and produces men who act like machines.
 
Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'
 
The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.
 
Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.
 
Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?
 
Understanding a person does not mean condoning; it only means that one does not accuse him as if one were God or a judge placed above him.
 
To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.
 
Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
27 quotes     Show as list