People do not see that the main question is not : "Am I loved?" which is to a large extent the question : "Am I approved of? Am I protected? Am I admired?" The main question is: "Can I love?

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We are not on the way to greater individualism, but are becoming an increasingly manipulated mass civilization.

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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.

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The deepest need of the human being is to overcome our separateness, to leave the prison of our loneliness.

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Happiness does not exclude sadness - if a person responds to life, he's sometimes happy and sometimes sad. What matters is he responds.

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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

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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

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The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots.

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Respect is not fear and awe; it...[is]the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.Fromm

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Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.

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