Erich Fromm: Love is the only way of knowledge, which in the act of un...

Our vitality, and the vitality of each nation, rests on the sincerity and depth of the faith in the ideas which it announces, or pronounces.

Erich Fromm

vitality depth ideas

Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.

Erich Fromm

equality men history

The manual worker does not have to sell his personality. He doesn't have to sell his smile.

Erich Fromm

his-smile personality doe

Basically, there can only be two answers. One is to overcome separateness and find unity by regression to the state of unity which existed before awareness ever arose, that is, before man was born. The other answer is to be fully born, to develop one's awareness, one's reason, one's capacity to love to such a point that one transcends one's own egocentric involvement, and arrives at a new harmony, at a new oneness with the world.

Erich Fromm

capacity-to-love men two

The kind of relatedness to the world may be noble or trivial, but even being related to the basest kind of pattern is immensely preferable to being alone.

Erich Fromm

noble solitude loneliness

I am convinced that boredom is one of the greatest tortures. If I were to imagine Hell, it would be the place where you were continually bored.

Erich Fromm

bores-you boredom blessing

Free man is by necessity insecure, thinking man by necessity uncertain.

Erich Fromm

insecure men thinking

Man can be conditioned to behave in almost every desired way; but only "almost.

Erich Fromm

behavior men way

I think what democracy means today, in reality, is to a large extent, manipulated consent - not forced consent, manipulated consent - and manipulated more and more with the help of Madison Avenue.

Erich Fromm

mean reality thinking

I only wish to be the fountain of love from which you drink, every drop promising eternal passion.

Erich Fromm

drink passion wish

I believe that the unity of man as opposed to other living things derives from the fact that man is the conscious life of himself. Man is conscious of himself, of his future, which is

Erich Fromm

law men believe

Another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while one's own nation stands for everything that is good and noble. Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard - every action of oneself by another. Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals, which they serve.

Erich Fromm

tyrants goal enemy

Death is never sweet, not even if it is suffered for the highest ideal.

Erich Fromm

ideals sweet death

On the whole, our modern ritual is impoverished and does not fulfill man's need for collective art and ritual.

Erich Fromm

doe men art

Once they are through the process of education, most people lose the capacity of wondering, of being surprised. They feel they ought to know everything, and hence that it is a sign of ignorance to be surprised or puzzled by anything.

Erich Fromm

ignorance education people

The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced -- by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.

Erich Fromm

successful men science

Even the most sadistic and destructive man is human, as human as the saint.

Erich Fromm

human-nature saint men

The paradoxical and tragic situation of man is that his conscience is weakest when he needs it most.

Erich Fromm

tragic men needs

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.

Erich Fromm

sacrifice love mean

If there is no evidence that sport lowers aggression, at the same time it should be said that there is also no evidence that sport is motivated by aggression.

Erich Fromm

motivated should sports

Love is the only way of knowledge, which in the act of union answers my quest. In the act of loving, of giving myself, in the act of penetrating the other person, I find myself, I discover myself, I discover us both, I discover man.