Quote

The essential difference between the unhappy, neurotic type person and him of great joy is the difference between get and give.

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
Persons
Unhappy
Person
Essential
Giving
Essentials
Great
Difference
Type
Joy
Differences
Give
Neurotic

More quotes by 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
The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. But given man's nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become ''Golems',' they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life.
Erich Fromm
Image
It is a tragedy that most of us die before we have begun to live.
Erich Fromm
Image
Every society by its own practice of living and by the mode of relatedness, of feelings, and perceiving, develops a system of categories which determines the forms of awareness.
Erich Fromm
Image
Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one's capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable.
Erich Fromm
Image
Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.
Erich Fromm
Image
Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.
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
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
I would say, compared with the 19th century, compared with most previous history, this is as good or better a society than any which man has ever made. But that doesn't mean it is such a good one.
Erich Fromm
Image
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.
Erich Fromm
Image
The customer is an object to be manipulated, not a concrete person whose aims the businessman is interested to satisfy.
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
Man can never stand still. He must find solutions to this contradiction, and ever better solutions to the extent to which reality enables him.
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
People have committed suicide because of their failure to realize the passions for love , power , fame , revenge . Cases of suicide because of a lack of sexual satisfaction are virtually nonexistent.
Erich Fromm
Image
For [Sigmund ] Freud, the manifest dream, that is that which we remember after waking,is like a code message, that can be interpreted, provided the right key is avail-able, for example the method of free association.
Erich Fromm
Image
I need you because I love you.
Erich Fromm
Image
In the sleeping state, instead, one is much more oneself, even if society never ceases to intervene.
Erich Fromm
Image
That is not quite enough to make one happy, if one spends eight hours a day in something which in itself has no meaning and interest, except that one gains money from it.
Erich Fromm