Skip to content

Individual Quotes by Erich Fromm

38 Individual quotes by Erich Fromm

All Individual quotes Erich Fromm’s page

Erich Fromm reminds us that people need each other to thrive. He explains that loving one person well means connecting to the larger human family. He also describes life as a continual process of giving birth to ourselves. He warns that systems and ideologies can become refuges that hide true human needs.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

The duty to be alive is the same as the duty to become oneself, to develop into the individual one potentially is.

Image

Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not…

Image

The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of…

Image

The criterion of mental health is not one of individual adjustment to a given social order, but a universal one, valid for…

Image

I believe that if an individual is not on the path to transcending his society and seeing in what way it furthers…

Image

When an individual is awake, almost all he does and says is inspired by the model of behavior that the society imposes,even…

Image

All men are in need of help and depend on one another. Human solidarity is the necessary condition for the unfolding of…

Image

The individual citizen has very little possibility of having any influence - of making his opinion felt in the decision-making.

Image

. . . freedom to creat and construct, to wonder and to venture. Such freedom requires that the individual be active and…

Image

To love one person productively means to be related to his human core, to him as representing mankind. Love for one individual,…

Image

Our contemporary Western society, in spite of its material, intellectual and political progress, is increasingly less conducive to mental health, and tends…

Image

Also in contemporary Western society the union with the group is the prevalent way of overcoming separateness. It is a union which…

Image

Many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that…

Image

Psychoanalysis , which interprets the human being as a socialized being, and the psychic apparatus as essentially developed and determined through the…

Image

I understand by socialism a society in which the aim of production is not profit, but the use. In which the individual…

Image

We have, in the same way, relegated our own responsibility in what happens to our country to the specialists, who are supposed…

Image

“The "pathology of normalcy" rarely deteriorates to graver forms of mental illness because society produces the antidote against such deterioration. When pathological…

Image

The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or…

Image

If the meaning of life has become doubtful, if one's relations to others and to oneself do not offer security, then fame…

Image

The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of…

Image

“Both the mentally healthy and the neurotic are driven by the need to find an answer [to the problem of human existence],…

Image

Ideas become powerful only if they appear in the flesh; an idea which does not lead to action by the individual and…

Image

Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance of the…

Image

We are all equal in the sense that no man must mean - must be - the means for the purposes of…

Image

The member of a primitive clan might express his identity in the formula "I am we"; he cannot yet conceive of himself…

Image

All genuine ideals have one thing in common: they express the desire for something which is not yet accomplished but which is…

Image

The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born…

Image

“The absolutely alienated individual worships at the altar of an idol, and it makes little difference by what names this idol is…

Image

The most important factor for the development of the individual is the structure and the values of the society into which he…

Image

Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with…

Image

Neurosis can be understood best as the battle between tendencies within an individual; deep character analysis leads, if successful, to the progressive…

Image

If an individual is able to love productively, he loves himself, too; if he can love only others, he cannot love at…

Image

I would say democracy once meant an organizational society and a state, in which the individual citizen is - feels - responsible,…

Image

Man, the more he gains freedom in the sense of emerging from the original oneness with man and nature and the more…

Image

We forget that, although each of the liberties which have been won must be defended with utmost vigour, the problem of freedom…

Image

For [Karl] Marx what counts is man. He is the root of everything;while for capitalism, the aim are things, profit, and man…

Image

If we love our fellow humans, we cannot limit our insight and our love only to others as individuals...We have to be…

Image

The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not…

Image

Other authors on Individual

More by Erich Fromm

The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.

Only when man succeeds in developing his reason and love further than he has done so far, only when he can build a world…

Freedom does not mean license.

“It is hardly necessary to stress the fact that the ability to love as an act of giving depends on the character development of…

The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces…

Exploitation and manipulation produce boredom and triviality; they cripple man, and all factors that make man into a psychic cripple turn him also into…

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,…

“The wealth of data to be found in social and political life. The belief that people do not want to make sacrifices is notoriously…

By equality, one once understood equality in the very same sense in which the Bible speaks of equality: that we are all equal, inasmuch…

“Human beings had two basic orientations: HAVING and BEING HAVING: seeks to acquire, posses things even people BEING: focuses on the experience; exchanging, engaging,…

“Most people are not even aware of their need to conform. They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations,…

Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.

To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibility would be blind if they were not guided by knowledge.

Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unite him…

“Perhaps most trivial talk is a need to talk about oneself; hence, the never-ending subject of health and sickness, children, travel, successes, what one…