1900-1980, American Psychologist
Authority is not a quality one person ''has,'' in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him.
Erich Fromm – [Authority]
By alienation is meant a mode of experience in which the person experiences himself as an alien. He has become, one might say, estranged from himself. He does not experience himself as the center of his world, as the creator of his own acts — but his acts and their consequences have become his masters, whom he obeys, or whom he may even worship. The alienated person is out of touch with himself as he is out of touch with any other person. He, like the others, is experienced as things are experienced; with the senses and with common sense, but at the same time without being related to oneself and to the world outside positively.
Erich Fromm – [Alienation]
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
Erich Fromm – [Creativity]
Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.
Erich Fromm – [Greed]
If I am what I have and if I lose what I have who then am I?
Erich Fromm – [Possessions]
Immature love says: ''I love you because I need you.'' Mature love says: ''I need you because I love you.''
Erich Fromm – [Love]
In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.
Erich Fromm – [Present]
Integrity simple means not violating one's own identity.
Erich Fromm – [Integrity]
Just as love is an orientation which refers to all objects and is incompatible with the restriction to one object, so is reason a human faculty which must embrace the whole of the world with which man is confronted.
Erich Fromm – [Reason]
Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.
Erich Fromm – [Equality]
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.
Erich Fromm – [Love]
Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
Erich Fromm – [Love]
Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.
Erich Fromm – [Existence]
Man may be defined as the animal that can say ''I,'' that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.
Erich Fromm – [Identity]
Man's biological weakness is the condition of human culture.
Erich Fromm – [Weakness]
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.
Erich Fromm – [Birth]
Modern man thinks he loses something – time – when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains — except kill it.
Erich Fromm – [Time and Time Management]
Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies.
Erich Fromm – [Creativity]
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.
Erich Fromm – [Patriotism]
Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.
Erich Fromm – [Charity]