The 75 best phrases of Erich Fromm
For him psychoanalysisIn its traditional view especially, the past is the protagonist and even the antagonist of our behavior and the way we live our lives today.
Because we respond uncontrollably to our unconscious desires, from what we long for and do not have until the accumulated resentment for what we consider injustices, but either way we always end up in the same place: the past.
This was the vision of Erich Fromm, one of the most prominent psychoanalysts in the social field of psychology., for making it clear that we all have a dark side that sooner or later comes to light. While, at the same time, he has the ability to redeem himself and find a beneficial path.
Famous quotes by Erich Fromm
Thus forming, in the field of psychological study, a new course in what is known as humanistic psychoanalysis and In this article you will see what were the ideas and thoughts that led Erich Fromm to have this vision of people and the complexity of human relationships.
1. The conditions for creativity must perplex us; to concentrate; accept conflict and tension; reborn every day; feel yourself.
Creativity deserves to be recognized as, what it is, one of the greatest attributes of the human mind.
2. Chess: An activity where problems must be solved: with reason, with imagination and with conscience.
Chess is the best example of how intelligence and imagination can work in perfect harmony.
3. The principle of effectiveness is made present by love and productive work.
Love what you do and you will see how it is easier and more satisfying for you.
4. Joy is not momentary ecstasy, but the radiance that accompanies being.
Happiness is a reflection of the peace that makes us feel whole.
5. You are born alone and you die alone, and in the parenthesis the loneliness is so great that you need to share life to forget it.
We all live in a perpetual loneliness that we are trying to avoid.
6. Paradoxically, being able to be alone is the condition for being able to love.
Loneliness is not synonymous with emptiness, but it is the best opportunity to love ourselves and others.
7. Only the person who has faith in himself is capable of having faith in others.
If you are not able to love yourself, you will not be able to have the ability to love others.
8. Sex without love only bridges the gap between two human beings momentarily.
When there are no emotions involved in sex, it ends up being an empty physical act.
9. Love is the only healthy and satisfying answer to the problem of human existence.
Love fills us in such a way that it can overwhelm us, but we can never resent it.
10. Closely related to the development of the capacity to love is the evolution of the love object. In the first months and years of life, the child's closest relationship is the one he has with the mother.
Our paternal bonds, is the first example of love that we will have and for which we will look for our future companions.
11. Childish love follows the principle: "I love because they love me." Mature love obeys the principle: 'they love me because I love'. Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says, "I need you because I love you."
Although love never hurts, it is not always enough if you do not know how to identify which one is predominant in you.
12. The present is the point where the past and the future meet, a border in time, but not different in quality of the two kingdoms that it unites.
You have to take advantage of the present, because everything happens in an instant.
13. For most people, the problem of love is fundamentally in being loved, and not in loving, not in the capacity to love itself.
We tend to be selfish about love, we look for the best and what pleases us. But what about the other person?
14. The meaning of life consists only in the very act of living.
Who lives worried about everything, is only dying slowly.
15. One cannot be deeply sensitive to the world without being very sad.
To be empathetic with everything that happens around us, you have to embrace the sadness that surrounds you.
16. Hope is paradoxical. To have hope means to be ready at all times for what is not yet born, but without despairing if the birth does not occur in the span of our lives.
Hope is that understanding that we can achieve something, in our own time and no matter what else.
17. To live is to be born at every moment.
Every moment of our life is an adventure, so we have to make the most of it.
18. Modern consumers can be identified with the following formula: I am = what I have and what I consume.
Sometimes our identity is subject to everything material that we possess.
19. Care, responsibility, respect and knowledge are mutually interdependent.
Each of these traits has its own elements, but they can all work together for the greater good.
20. Only those who do not want more than they have are prosperous.
Greed creates only monsters with infinite emptiness, not successful people.
21. The experience of separation arouses anxiety; It is, in fact, the source of all anxiety.
Separations cause us anxiety because we fear we will be hopelessly alone.
22. What does one person give to another? She gives of herself the most precious thing she has, of her own life. This does not necessarily mean that he sacrifices her life for the other, but rather that he gives what is alive in him.
Give the best of yourself to the one you love, but always reserve a precious piece of yourself for yourself.
23. Greed and peace are mutually exclusive.
Nobody who wants power, seeks tranquility.
24. Obsessive work produces madness, as well as complete laziness, but with this combination you can live.
You have to maintain a balance between dedicating ourselves fully to our work and lazily enjoying life.
25. The paradox of love is to be oneself, without ceasing to be two.
Just because you are in a relationship does not mean that you stop being yourself to please your partner.
26. Society would have to be organized in such a way that the social and loving nature of the human being was not separated from his social existence, but rather joined together.
Our interaction with society is a fundamental part of who we are.
27. Men are born the same, but they are also born different.
Although we are all human, each person is a particular universe.
28. What most people in our culture understand by being loved is basically a mixture of popularity and sex appeal.
Unfortunately, many of us are more inclined to superficiality than to feelings.
29. Birth is not an act, it is a process.
We are born every time we get up from a mistake, every time we achieve a triumph, every time we gain deep knowledge.
30. Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
To get your ideas heard, you must have the courage to speak without yelling.
31. The danger of the past was that men were slaves. But the danger of the future is that men will turn into robots.
Somehow, we are and always will be tied to something.
32. Most people die before they are born. Creativity means being born before you die.
Many people are conformists, unless they risk finding their happiness.
33. Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, the social process requires the standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.
We cannot stay with retrograde ideas if we want to move towards a proper society.
34. The search for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the only condition that prompts the human being to reveal his powers.
When we stop limiting ourselves, we can tap into our true potential.
35. In the art of living, man is at the same time the artist and the object of his art, he is the sculptor and he is the marble, the doctor and the patient.
Living in a good way, enjoying life in our unique and particular way, is as difficult to master as any other art,
36. Poison is poison even if it comes in golden pills.
If something is bad for us in any way, no matter how good it seems, it will always be just as bad.
37. There can be no freedom without the freedom to fail.
Fear of failure is the greatest impediment to growing and seeking our autonomy.
38. It is not rich who has much, but who gives much.
Being rich does not mean owning many assets, it is about having values and empathy with ourselves and others.
39. Greed is a bottomless pit that drains a person in an endless effort to satisfy need without ever reaching satisfaction.
Greed certainly makes us progress, but being greedy to the extreme can end up destroying our lives.
40. The human being is the only animal whose existence is a problem that he has to solve.
While all animals contribute something to the global ecosystem, humans only destroy it.
41. In reality, there is only the act of loving, which is a productive activity. It implies caring for, knowing, responding, affirming, enjoying a person, a tree, a painting, an idea. It means giving life, increasing your vitality. It is a process that develops and intensifies itself.
Truly loving is something totally gratifying that increases and increases, making us feel better and better.
42. In contrast to symbiotic union, mature love means union on condition of preserving one's integrity, one's own individuality.
To love maturely is to love the individuality of the other person, preserve our own and grow mutually.
43. Giving produces more happiness than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving is the expression of my vitality.
Helping other people is such a good thing that it can make us feel good like nothing else.
44. The biological weakness of being is the condition of human culture.
The biological force is achieved by the species thanks to their contact with nature and dealing with it without shortcuts. Meanwhile humans flee from it to stay safe.
45. Without love, humanity could not exist another day.
Love is the engine that moves the world and it is not only a saying, but a fact.
46. While we consciously fear not being loved, the real fear, although usually unconscious, is that of loving.
Loving someone is a commitment that not everyone is willing to make.
47. Selfish people are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.
Being selfish makes us close to other people and even to our own feelings.
48. Mother's love is peace. It doesn't need to be acquired, it doesn't need to be earned.
Mothers are the ones who will give us the purest love of our life, completely selfless and without the need to be earned.
49. You do not progress by improving what has already been done, but by striving to achieve what still needs to be done.
When you focus on just one goal, you may end up hating it. So look for more things that entertain your soul.
50. Two people fall in love when they feel they have found the best item available on the market.
We fight to be liked above others. And when we feel that we have found the best consciously or unconsciously, love arises.
51. The psychic task that a person can and should set for himself is not to feel safe, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.
Insecurity is something that will always be with us to a greater or lesser extent, it is a feeling that is impossible to eliminate.
52. The answers depend, to some extent, on the degree of individualization achieved by the individual.
Society and social pressure can influence our opinions and ideas, but it is when we stop thinking about it that our opinions are really ours.
53. Envy, jealousy, ambition, all kinds of greed, are passions; love is an action, the practice of a human power that can only be realized in freedom and never as the result of a compulsion.
Love is something that is done freely, it should not and cannot be forced in any way. It is something that fills you up, not that consumes you.
54. Boredom is nothing more than the experience of a paralysis of our productive powers.
This takes away time that we could be taking advantage of in something beneficial.
55. We all dream; we don't understand our dreams, and yet we act as if nothing strange is happening in our minds asleep, odd at least about what our minds do logically and decisively when we are awake.
What differentiates dreams from reality? Well, the way our brain interprets and processes it.
56. In reality, everyone is thirsty for love; they watch countless movies based on happy and unhappy love stories, listen to hundreds of trivial songs that talk about love, and yet hardly anyone thinks that there is anything to learn about of love.
Although we all want love, we never ask ourselves how we can love and be loved correctly until we do it the wrong way.
57. We are not on the road to greater individualism, but we are becoming an increasingly manipulated mass civilization.
Instead of evolving towards people with critical thinking we are increasingly a society that depends on others, their approval and criticism.
58. The ability to think objectively is reason; the emotional attitude behind reason is humility.
Reason and humility go hand in hand, they are necessary factors to think objectively.
59. The specific characteristics that make a person attractive depend on the fashion of the time, both physically and mentally.
Attraction is something that is defined by culture and by the temporal fashions of each society that change over time.
60. The deepest need of man is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his loneliness.
Being a social species, we look with all our might for ties with other people.
61. Avoiding pain at all costs can only be achieved at the price of total detachment, which precludes the ability to experience happiness.
Everything that has the power to make us happy also has the ability to make us suffer and we must accept it.
62. We are what we do.
Actions speak more about people than anything else. They not only define us before others but also change our perception of ourselves.
63. If we want to learn to love we must proceed in the same way as we would if we wanted to learn any other art, music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering.
Learning to love is something complicated that requires the same dedication and time as any other study.
64. Why are contemporary human beings fascinated with buying and consuming, and yet they have very little attachment to what they buy?
When we obtain something material that we have wanted for a long time, it eventually loses value because it does not bring us great benefits.
65. Modern man thinks that he loses something, time, when he does not do things quickly. However, he doesn't know what to do with the time he wins, except kill him.
Although we strive to have as much free time as possible, all that free time is simply wasted.
66. In any kind of creative endeavor, the person who creates unites with his material, which represents the world outside him.
The creators convey their feelings and thoughts in their works.
67. Sexual attraction creates, for a moment, the illusion of union, but without love, such union leaves strangers as far apart as before.
It is something momentary that does not fully link our existence to someone else's.
68. Love is not a natural thing. Rather, it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and overcoming narcissism. It is not a feeling, it is a practice.
Love must be perfected over time, it is so complex that it is not something that is simply done without thinking; but it's totally worth it.
69. Freedom does not mean license.
Having the freedom to do something does not necessarily mean that we have the authority to do it.
70. As long as the rest of the world wants more, classes will form, there will be class war, there will be an international war.
As long as there is ambition in the human being, it will be impossible for there to be peace.
71. Fair means not resorting to fraud and deception in exchange for comforts and services or in exchange for feelings.
Justice should not be used as a bargaining chip for favors.
72. Love is the active concern for life and the growth of what we love.
The feeling of love is constantly filled with the concern that everything is alright for that which we love.
73. The feeling of falling in love only develops with respect to human goods that are within our possibilities of exchange.
It is impossible to fall in love with someone who is not ‘within our reach’ if you think it happened to you, it’s probably just attraction.
74. Who will say if a happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort that life implies.
Life can be hard, but the moments of peace and beauty in it are capable of filling so much that they are totally worth it.
75. Experiencing love in the way of having implies enclosing, imprisoning or dominating the loved object.
Love and the feeling of possession can be easily confused, the difference is that in love there is trust and within excessive possession only mistrust.