Today it is not alive. What, then, is this experience of humanism? With the above survey I have tried to show you that the experience of humanism is that โ as Terence expressed it โ โNothing human is alien to meโ; that nothing which exists in any human being does not exist in myself. I am the criminal and I am the saint. I am the child and I am the adult. I am the man who lived a hundred thousand years ago and I am the man who, provided we don't destroy the human race, will live hundred thousand years from now.
Erich FrommCan one have love? If we could, love would need to be a thing, a substance that one can have, own, possess. The truth is, there is no such thing as love. Love is an abstraction, perhaps a goddess or an alien being, although nobody has ever seen this goddess. In reality, there exists only the act of loving. To love is a productive activity. It implies caring for, knowing, responding, affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing to life, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self increasing.
Erich FrommI think [Karl] Marx, Pope John XXIII or Rosa Luxemburg [had achieved the mode of existence].But it would be useless to look at a list of illustrious names.
Erich FrommGreed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.
Erich FrommEducation is identical with helping the child realize his potentialities. The opposite of education is manipulation, which is based on the absence of faith in the growth of potentialities and the connection that a child will be right only if the adults put into him what is desirable and suppress what seems to be undesirable.
Erich Fromm