The quotations of

Erich Fromm

German-American sociologist and psychoanalyst

1900–1980

16 quotes, most often on Love, Politics and Life & Death.

Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says: ‘I need you because I love you.’
The Art of Loving (1956), Ch. 2
- Love
To love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person.
- Love
There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started out with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which fails so regularly, as love.
- Love
The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
Escape from Freedom (1941), Ch. 7
- Politics
- Success
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 3
- Philosophy
To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.
The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (1968)
- Hope
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 Art of Loving (1956)
- Love
Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.
The Art of Loving (1956), Ch. 2
Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians; people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in themselves.
The Art of Loving (1956)
- Economics
- Politics
I believe that none can “save” his fellow man by making a choice for him. To help him, he can indicate the possible alternatives, with sincerity and love, without being sentimental and without illusion.
Credo (1965)
- Decisions
To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.
Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 4
- Life & Death
Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness.
Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 3
- Love
- Responsibility
Envy, jealousy, ambition, any kind of greed are passions; love is an action, the practice of human power, which can be practiced only in freedom and never as a result of compulsion.
The Art of Loving (1956)
- Envy
- Love
Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals which they serve.
The Art of Loving (1956)
- Enemies
Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.
Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 3 “Human Nature and Character”
- Life & Death
- Philosophy

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