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.
except gives life man meaning unfolding
There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives to his life by the unfolding of his powers.
except gives life man meaning unfolding
There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by unfolding of his powers.
integrity means simple
Integrity simple means not violating one's own identity.
acts alienated alienation center common consequences creator experience himself meant might mode oneself outside related senses time touch whom
By alienation is meant a mode of experience in which the person experiences himself as an alien. He has become, one might say, estranged from himself. He does not experience himself as the center of his world, as the creator of his own acts -- but his acts and their consequences have become his masters, whom he obeys, or whom he may even worship. The alienated person is out of touch with himself as he is out of touch with any other person. He, like the others, is experienced as things are experienced; with the senses and with common sense, but at the same time without being related to oneself and to the world outside positively.
sex mean people
What most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal.
love mean sacrifice
There is no word in our language which has been so much misused and prostituted as the word love. It has been preached by those who were ready to condone every cruelty if it served their purpose; it has been used as a disguise under which to force people into sacrificing their own happiness, into submitting their whole self to those who profited from this surrender. [...] It has been made so empty that for many people love may mean no more than that two people have lived together for twenty years just without fighting more often than once a week.
mean self schizoid
In the 19th century inhumanity meant cruelty; in the 20th century it means schizoid self-alienation.
mean feelings use
Fairness means not to use fraud and trickery in the exchange of commodities and services and the exchange of feelings.
mean men individual
To love one person productively means to be related to his human core, to him as representing mankind. Love for one individual, in so far as it is divorced from love for man, can refer only to the superficial and to the accidental; of necessity it remains shallow.
mean concentration
To be concentrated means to live fully in the present.
christian mean reflection
If the meaning of life has become doubtful, if one's relations to others and to oneself do not offer security, then fame is one means to silence one's doubts. It has a function to be compared with that of the Egyptian pyramids or the Christian faith in immortality: it elevates one's individual life from its limitations and instability to the plane of indestructability; if one's name is known to one's contemporaries and if one can hope that it will last for centuries, then one's life has meaning and significance by this very reflection of it in the judgments of others.
meaningful men knowing
One of the worst forms of mental suffering is boredom, not knowing what to do with oneself and one's life. Even if man had no monetary, or any other reward, he would be eager to spend his energy in some meaningful way because he could not stand the boredom which inactivity produces.
integrity mean identity
Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one's identity, in the many ways in which such violation is possible.