The words are vessels that are filled with experience that overflows the vessels. The words point to an experience; they are not the experience. The moment that I express what I experience exclusively in thought and words, the experience has gone: it has dried up, is dead, a mere thought. Hence being is indescribable in words and is communicable only by sharing my experience.

— Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm Quotes

Only in the love of those who do not serve a purpose, love begins to unfold.

— Erich Fromm

For despite what some people say, love is not only a sweet falling bound to come and quickly go away.

— Erich Fromm

Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance, albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking process attempts to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of logic and plausibility.

— Erich Fromm

Man seeks for drama and excitement; when he cannot get satisfaction on a higher level, he creates for himself the drama of destruction.

— Erich Fromm

The capacity to love demands a state of intensity, awakeness, enhanced vitality, which can only be the result of a productive and active orientation in many other spheres of life. If one is not productive in other spheres, one is not productive in love either.

— Erich Fromm

Faith, in the having mode, is a crutch for those who want to be certain, those who want an answer to life without daring to search for it themselves. Faith, in the being mode, is not, in the first place, a belief in certain ideas, but an inner orientation; an attitude.

— Erich Fromm

The insane person or the dreamer fails completely in having an objective view of the world outside; but all of us are more or less insane, or more or less asleep; all of us have an unobjective view of the world, one which is distorted by our narcissistic orientation.

— Erich Fromm

The difference between being and having is not essentially that between East and West. The difference is rather between a society centered around persons and one centered around things.

— Erich Fromm

The words are vessels that are filled with experience that overflows the vessels. The words point to an experience; they are not the experience. The moment that I express what I experience exclusively in thought and words, the experience has gone: it has dried up, is dead, a mere thought. Hence being is indescribable in words and is communicable only by sharing my experience.

— Erich Fromm

While the managers are right as far as the work methods they offer are concerned, experience has shown – and has convinced not a few managers – that if the workers can be truly active, responsible, and knowledgeable in their work role, the formerly uninterested ones change considerably and show a remarkable degree of inventiveness, activity, imagination, and satisfaction.

— Erich Fromm

Intelligence, which is used without the control of the mind, can lead people to dangers up to extinction. Utilitarian intelligence, which the mind cannot control, is dangerous as much as it is sharp.

— Erich Fromm

If humanity continues to consume natural resources irresponsibly and disrupt the balance of nature that provides human life, it will be inevitable that we will encounter the catastrophe of total extinction in less than a hundred years.

— Erich Fromm

God explains to Jonah that the essence of love is to “labor” for something and “to make something grow,” that love and labor are inseparable. One loves that for which one labors, and one labors for that which one loves.

— Erich Fromm

One loves that for which one labors, and one labors for that which one loves.

— Erich Fromm

Can freedom become a burden, too heavy for man to bear, something he tries to escape from?

— Erich Fromm

If two people who have been strangers, as all of us are, suddenly let the wall between them break down, and feel close, feel one, this moment of oneness is one of the most exhilarating, most exciting experiences in life. It is all the more wonderful and miraculous for persons who have been shut off, isolated, without love.

— Erich Fromm

The idea that one can build peace while encouraging the striving for possession and profit is an illusion, and a dangerous one, because it deprives people of recognizing that they are confronted with a clear alternative: either a radical change of their character or the perpetuity of war.

— Erich Fromm

Man as he appears in any given culture is always a manifestation of human nature, a manifestation, however, which in its specific outcome is determined by the social arrangements under which he lives.

— Erich Fromm

Wer bin ich, wenn ich bin, was ich habe und dann verliere, was ich habe?

— Erich Fromm

Faith, in the having mode, is a crutch for those who want to be certain, those who want an answer to life without daring to search for it themselves.

— Erich Fromm
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