More Quotes by Erich Fromm
The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears
It takes a moment to tell someone you love them, but it takes a lifetime to prove it.
The affirmation of one's own life, happiness, growth and freedom, is rooted in one's capacity to love.
The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots.
To love somebody is not just a strong feeling - it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.
The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self.
Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.
That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.
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
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
