The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers. Erich Fromm
There is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself. Erich Fromm
Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love. Erich Fromm
There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail. Erich Fromm
Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others. Erich Fromm
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. Erich Fromm
Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. Erich Fromm
Authority is not a quality one person ”has,” in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him. Erich Fromm
Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality. Erich Fromm
Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance of the individual voter. Erich Fromm
Integrity simply means not violating one’s own identity. Erich Fromm
Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says: ‘I need you because I love you’. Erich Fromm
What most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal. Erich Fromm
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 centre 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. Erich Fromm
In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead. Erich Fromm