Quote

Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with others, are refuges from what man most dreads: isolation.

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
Individual
Isolation
Others
Refuge
Wells
Dread
Refuges
Well
Customs
Dreads
Men
Absurd
Connects
However
Degrading
Belief
Custom
Religion
Nationalism

More quotes by Erich Fromm

Image
Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.
Erich Fromm
Image
The most important misunderstanding seems to me to lie in a confusion between the human necessities which I consider part of human nature, and the human necessities as they appear as drives, needs, passions, etc., in any given historical period.
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
Greedhas no satiation point, since its consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression it is meant to overcome.
Erich Fromm
Image
Respect is not fear and awe it...[is]the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.
Erich Fromm
Image
The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology.
Erich Fromm
Image
The root of the word education is e-ducere, literally, to lead forth, or to bring out something which is potentially present.
Erich Fromm
Image
It is notorious that no war between countries elicits as much hate and cruelty as civil war, in which there is no lack of acquaintance between the two warring sides.
Erich Fromm
Image
Loving becomes, and the ability to love, becomes one of the most important things in life.
Erich Fromm
Image
[Sigmund ] Freud did not under-stand that the dream is a highly creative act, written in the universal language of symbolism, and only secondarily does censorship distort those parts that the subject refuses to accept even in sleep.
Erich Fromm
Image
. . . freedom to creat and construct, to wonder and to venture. Such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible, not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine . . . It is not enough that men are not slaves if social conditions further the existence of automatons, the result will not be love of life, but love of death.
Erich Fromm
Image
The Russians have succeeded in one thing: they have sold the world the idea that they represent socialism and the ideas of Marx,and we have done the greatest service to their propaganda by agreeing that that's what it is.
Erich Fromm
Image
Productive work, love and thought are possible only if a person can be, when necessary, quiet and alone. To be able to listen to oneself is the necessary condition for relating oneself to others.
Erich Fromm
Image
Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair.
Erich Fromm
Image
Education is helping the child realise his potentialities.
Erich Fromm
Image
Free man is by necessity insecure, thinking man by necessity uncertain.
Erich Fromm
Image
Education makes machines which act like men and produces men who act like machines.
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
It takes a moment to tell someone you love them, but it takes a lifetime to prove it.
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