647 Quotes by Erich Fromm

Love is the productive form of relatedness to others and to oneself. It implies responsibility, care, respect. If it isn't productive and respectful, it isn't love, but only fear masquerading as love.

The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have.

The revolutionary and critical thinker is in a certain way always outside of his society while of course he is at the same time also in it.

The right to express our thoughts means something only if we are able to have thoughts of our own

There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.

Knowing means to penetrate through the surface, in order to arrive at the roots, and hence the causes; knowing means to "see" reality in its nakedness. Knowing does not mean to be in the possession of the truth; it means to penetrate the surface and to strive critically and actively in order to approach truth ever more closely.

Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair.

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.

In the 19th century inhumanity meant cruelty; in the 20th century it means schizoid self-alienation.