#Quote
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
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.
Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.
Well-being is possible to the degree to which one has overcome one's narcissism; to the degree to which one is open, responsive, sensitive, awake, empty.... Well-being means, finally, to drop one's Ego, to give up greed, to cease chasing after preservation and the aggrandizement of the Ego, to be and to experience one's self in the act of being, not in having, preserving, coveting, using.
The affirmation of one's own life, happiness, growth and freedom, is rooted in one's capacity to love.
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.
We are not on the way to greater individualism, but are becoming an increasingly manipulated mass civilization.
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.
The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.
