Quote

We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.

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
Growth
Consume
History
Manipulation
Live
Materialism
Things
Manipulate
World
Consumption
Sane
Connection
Connections
Consumerism

More quotes by Erich Fromm

Image
Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice.
Erich Fromm
Image
Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?
Erich Fromm
Image
The existential split in man would be unbearable could he not establish a sense of unity within himself and with the natural and human world outside.
Erich Fromm
Image
I think American man unconsciously hates his work very often, because he feels trapped by it... imprisoned by it... because he feels that he is spending most of his energy for something which has no meaning in itself.
Erich Fromm
Image
I believe indeed that to rescue the humanist tradition of the last decades is of the utmost importance, and that Victor Serge is one of the outstanding personalities representing the socialist aspect of humanism.
Erich Fromm
Image
I think we got off the track, as many societies do, who follow successfully one aim, and yet are not capable of seeing at what point the pursuit of this aim prevents them from following a more total aim. That is to say, they get into a blind alley.
Erich Fromm
Image
We've wanted to produce more in the 19th century and the 20th century in order to give man the possibility for more dignified human life but actually what has happened is that production and consumption have become means - have ceased to be means and have become ends, and we are production crazy and consumption crazy.
Erich Fromm
Image
Mobilizing the love of life is the only force that can defeat the love for the dead.
Erich Fromm
Image
The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity.
Erich Fromm
Image
I want to mention that Marx shares something, if you don't mind the comparison, with the Old Testament: many people talk about him, but nobody has read him.
Erich Fromm
Image
The criterion of mental health is not one of individual adjustment to a given social order, but a universal one, valid for all men, of giving a satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
Erich Fromm
Image
The experience of separateness arouses anxiety it is, indeed, the source of all anxiety.
Erich Fromm
Image
There is nothing inhuman, evil, or irrational which does not give some comfort, provided it is shared by a group.
Erich Fromm
Image
We are not on the way to greater individualism, but are becoming an increasingly manipulated mass civilization.
Erich Fromm
Image
Boredom is nothing but the experience of a paralysis of our productive powers.
Erich Fromm
Image
I would say love is something everybody talks about, and the need for love is one of the most basic needs of man, namely the experience of union with another being - of becoming one with another being.
Erich Fromm
Image
Whether...a change from the supremacy of natural science to a new social science will take place...depends on one factor: how many brilliant, learned, disciplined, and caring men and women are attracted by the new challenge.
Erich Fromm
Image
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
Erich Fromm
Image
Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the same time the beginning of his freedom and the development of his reason.
Erich Fromm
Image
If I am what I have and if I lose what I have who then am I?
Erich Fromm