Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
Erich Seligmann Frommwas a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPsychologist
Date of Birth23 March 1900
CountryUnited States of America
above attitude concern country form hardly humanity individual interest love loving material mean nation necessary others patriotism power principles puts spiritual truth welfare
Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. ''Patriotism'' is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by ''patriotism'' I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one's own nation, which is the concern with the nation's spiritual as much as with its material welfare --never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.
begin book half imagine incomplete lack love today understand volumes
Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists.... When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.
immature love
Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says: 'I need you because I love you'
love-life men cogs
. . . 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.
love oneness erotic
Erotic love begins with separateness, and ends in oneness. Motherly love begins with oneness, and leads to separateness.
love-life life-and-death life-is
Mobilizing the love of life is the only force that can defeat the love for the dead.
love-is produce
Love is a power which produces love.
love maturity immature
Infantile love follows the principle: "I love because I am loved." Mature love follows the principle: "I am loved because I love." Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you.
life running love-is
If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem ofhuman existence, then any societywhich excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature.
responsibility love-is care
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.
mother mothers-love love-always
Mother's love always peace as it not to be acquired nor deserved.
love-life men quality
Critical and radical thought will only bear fruit when it is blended with the most precious quality man is endowed with - the love of life
ability-to-love ability art-of-loving
Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.
simple love-is thinking
People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love - or to be loved by - is difficult.