Quote

The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind - not the fiend or the sadist.

Erich Fromm

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Erich Fromm
Age: 79 †
Born: 1900
Born: March 23
Died: 1980
Died: March 18
Philosopher
Psychoanalyst
Psychologist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Frankfurt/Main
Ordinary
Danger
Mankind
Fear
Sadist
Power
Fiend
Men
Chief
Chiefs
Extraordinary

More quotes by Erich Fromm

Image
The only concern which I have today is that we have a policy, a foreign policy, which enables us to avoid a catastrophe which, if one understands it properly, is indescribable.
Erich Fromm
Image
While we teach knowledge, we are losing that teaching which is the most important one for human development: the teaching which can only be given by the simple presence of a mature, loving person.
Erich Fromm
Image
Power on the one side, fear on the other, are always the buttresses on which irrational authority is built.
Erich Fromm
Image
A dream is a microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul.
Erich Fromm
Image
I believe that man is the product of natural evolution that is born from the conflict of being a prisoner and separated from nature, and from the need to find unity and harmony with it.
Erich Fromm
Image
It is essential... that discipline should not be practised like a rule imposed on oneself from the outside, but that it becomes an expression of one's own will that it is felt as pleasant, and that one slowly accustoms oneself to a kind of behaviour which one would eventually miss, if one stopped practising it.
Erich Fromm
Image
It is true that one has to think first and then to act - but it's also true that if one has no possibility of acting, one's thinking kind of becomes empty and stupid.
Erich Fromm
Image
Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.
Erich Fromm
Image
Love is hot a higher power which descends upon mn nor a duty which is imposed upon him it is his own power by which he relates himself to the world and makes it truly his.
Erich Fromm
Image
Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.
Erich Fromm
Image
Having lost religious faith and the humanistic values bound up with it, he [man] concentrated on technical and material values and lost the capacity for deep emotional experiences, for the joy and sadness that accompany them.
Erich Fromm
Image
Politics and religious leaders [are hindered] by their egotism.
Erich Fromm
Image
Free man is by necessity insecure, thinking man by necessity uncertain.
Erich Fromm
Image
We substitute, or we rather hide, this fear of real intimacy by a superficial kind of friendliness, which is quite nice, but nevertheless, very shallow.
Erich Fromm
Image
Love is an active power in man a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unite him with others love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity.
Erich Fromm
Image
Jewish legend says that the world rests on 36 just men: only thirty six, but their moral strength is immense.
Erich Fromm
Image
What is common to our societies is the development into a managed mass society, with big bureaucracy, managing people. The Russians do it by force. We do it by persuasion.
Erich Fromm
Image
The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself indeed, we should be fully born when we die.
Erich Fromm
Image
There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.
Erich Fromm
Image
To live is to be born every minute. Death occurs when birth stops.
Erich Fromm