647 Quotes by Erich Fromm

Only dogmatic thinking, the result of the laziness of mind and heart, tries to construct simplistic schemes of the either-or type that block any real understanding.

While psychiatry is concerned with the question of why some people become insane, the real question is why most people do not become insane.

The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.

Capitalism puts things (capital) higher than life (labor). Power follows from possession, not from activity.

Právě jako jsou zlí a dobří duševně "zdraví" lidé, existují také zlí a dobří duševně nemocní. Zlo musíme vždycky označit jako zlo, náš morální soud se nezruší klinickou diagnózou. Na druhé straně i nejhorší člověk zůstává člověkem a má nárok na náš soucit.

The courage of the authoritarian character is essentially a courage to suffer what fate or its personal representative or “leader” may have destined him for. To suffer without complaining is his highest virtue—not the courage of trying to end suffering or at least to diminish it. Not to change fate, but to submit to it, is the heroism of the authoritarian character.

Today we take for granted that we are we. Yet the doubt about ourselves still exists, or has even grown.

The task of the moral philosopher-thinker is to support and strengthen the voice of human conscience, to recognize what is good or what is bad for people, whether they are good or bad for society in a period of evolution. May be a "voice crying in the wilderness", but only if that voice remains lively and uncompromising, it is possible to transform the desert into fertile land.

Human beings had two basic orientations: HAVING and BEINGHAVING: seeks to acquire, posses things even peopleBEING: focuses on the experience; exchanging, engaging, sharing with other people