"Can one have love? If we could, love……" — Erich Fromm
"Can one have love? If we could, love would need to be a thing, a substance that one can have, own, possess. The truth is, there is no such thing as love. Love is an abstraction, perhaps a goddess or an alien being, although nobody has ever seen this goddess. In reality, there exists only the act of loving. To love is a productive activity. It implies caring for, knowing, responding, affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing to life, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self increasing."
—
Erich Fromm
★
★
★
★
★
0.0 avg (0 ratings)
261 Quotes by Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm has 261 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
-
What are the conditions of the creative attitude, of seeing and responding, of being aware and being sensitive to what…
-
Mother's love is bliss, is peace, it need not be acquired, it need not be deserved. If it is there,…
-
It takes a moment to tell someone you love them, but it takes a lifetime to prove it.
-
I need you because I love you.
-
Reason is man's faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man's ability to manipulate…
-
Love is the child of freedom, never that of domination....
-
The duty to be alive is the same as the duty to become oneself, to develop into the individual one…
-
Man unites himself with the world in the process of creation.
-
Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance…
-
Creativity is the ability to see and to respond.
-
Giving is the highest expression of potency.
-
Man may be defined as the animal that can say ''I,'' that can be aware of himself as a separate…
See all 261 quotes by Erich Fromm »
More Abstraction Quotes
This quote is filed under Abstraction Quotes,
one of 249 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
-
Abstraction is real, probably more real than nature.
— Josef Albers
-
That's what it is that you rehearse - the making of music, not the playing of notes as abstractions.
— Sarah Caldwell
-
Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured.
— Paul Cezanne
-
So the universe is constantly moving in the direction of higher evolutionary impulses, creativity, abstraction, and meaning.
— Deepak Chopra
-
Love is not some complex, mystical abstraction. It is something accessible and human that we learn through our everyday experience,…
— Leo Buscaglia
-
The spiritual life is not a special career, involving abstraction from the world of things. It is a part of…
— Evelyn Underhill
-
The individual is the true reality of life. A cosmos in himself, he does not exist for the State, nor…
— Emma Goldman
-
The truly modern artist is aware of abstraction in an emotion of beauty.
— Piet Mondrian
-
Do not copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction.
— Paul Gauguin
-
The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint.
— Georgia O'Keeffe
-
Of the many forms of false culture, a premature converse with abstractions is perhaps the most likely to prove fatal…
— George Boole
-
It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an adversary; and it is one among a…
— Alexander Hamilton
See all 249 Abstraction Quotes »