647 Quotes by Erich Fromm

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.

If you do not smile, you are judged lacking in a 'pleasing personality' - and you need to have a pleasing personality if you want to sell your services, whether as a waitress, a salesman, or a physician.

To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.

Love of others and love of ourselves are not alternatives. On the contrary, an attitude of love towards themselves will be found in all those who are capable of loving others.

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.

A new question has arisen in modern man's mind, the question, namely, whether life is worth living...No sensible answer can be given to the question...because the question does not make any sense.

The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.

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

The need for the creation of collective art and ritual on a nonclerical basis is at least as important as literacy and higher education.