The aim of life is to be fully born, though its tragedy is that most of us die before we are thus born.
Erich FrommMan today being concerned with production and consumption as ends in themselves, has very little engergy time to devote himself to the true religious experience.
Erich FrommIf the handbag could think, it would have a terrific inferiority feeling, because, not having been bought, it would feel useless.
Erich FrommThe most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man.
Erich FrommWe are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent - people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.
Erich FrommThe main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears.
Erich Fromm