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

Chapters: 2. The Wordless Teachings
72. Helpful Fear

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“Who will tell whether one 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 which life implies.”

Chapters: 3. Weak Wishes, Strong Bones

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“Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.”

from Art of Loving

Chapters: 18. The Sick Society
12. This Over That

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“That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.”

from The Sane Society

Chapters: 18. The Sick Society

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“If other people do not understand our behavior—so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us… know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself—to his reason and his conscience.”

from The Sane Society

Chapters: 21. Following Empty Heart

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“Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market.”

from Art of Loving

Chapters: 24. Unnecessary Baggage

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“Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies.”

Chapters: 24. Unnecessary Baggage

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“Man’s main task is to give birth to himself.”

Chapters: 24. Unnecessary Baggage

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“The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have.”

Chapters: 46. Enough

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“The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.”

from The Sane Society

Chapters: 58. Goals Without Means
38. Fruit Over Flowers

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“Modern man thinks he loses something - time - when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains, except kill it.”

from Art of Loving

Chapters: 64. Ordinary Mind

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“Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true.”

from The Sane Society

Chapters: 65. Simplicity: the Hidden Power of Goodness

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“the crucial difficulty with which we are confronted lies in the fact that the development of man’s intellectual capacities has far outstripped the development of his emotions. Man’s brain lives in the 20th century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age.”

Chapters: 65. Simplicity: the Hidden Power of Goodness

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“Most people are not even aware of their need to conform. They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individualists, that they have arrived at their opinion as the result of their own thinking - and that it just happens that their ideas are the same as this of the majority.”

from Art of Loving

Chapters: 67. Three Treasures

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“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.”

from The Sane Society

Chapters: 71. Sick of Sickness

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

Chapters: 75. Greed

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“Greed has no satiation point, since its consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression it is meant to overcome.”

Chapters: 75. Greed

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“Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. 'Patriotism' is its cult... Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.”

Chapters: 78. Water

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“Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total… Man has created a world of man-made things as it never existed before. He has constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine he built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces are which he unleashes, the more powerless he feels himself as a human being. He is owned by his creations, and has lost ownership of himself.”

Chapters: 80. A Golden Age

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“The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots.”

Chapters: 80. A Golden Age

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“Of all, one must doubt. ”

Chapters: 65. Simplicity: the Hidden Power of Goodness

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“Human history began with an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.”

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“Man does not only sell commodities, he sells himself and feels himself to be a commodity.”

from Escape From Freedom, 1941

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“Socialism is the abolition of human self-alienation, the return of man as a real human being.”

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“Man does not only sell commodities, he sells himself and feels himself to be a commodity.”

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“Modern capitalism needs men who co-operate smoothly, and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated... What is the outcome? Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature.”

from Art of Loving

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“Uniformity and freedom are incompatible. Uniformity and mental health are incompatible.”

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“Religion: What at one time was a dynamic structure, mediating between man an his destiny and interpersonal responsibilities, has become mere mechanical ritual that dwarfs men rather than strengthening them.”

from Contribution (1964)

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“Theologians and philosophers have been saying for a century that God is dead, but what we confront is the possibility that man is dead, transformed into a thing, a producer, a consumer, an idolator”

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“Good is all that serves life, evil is all that serves death. Good is reverence for life... and all that enhances life. Evil is all that stifles life, narrows it down, cuts it to pieces.”

from Saturday Review (1964)

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“Man today is confronted with the most fundamental choice: not that between Capitalism and Communism, but that between robotism (of both the capitalist and communiste variety), of Humanistic Communitarian
Socialism.
”

from Marx's Concept of Man (1961)

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“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”

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“Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.”

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“There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.”

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“Man's main task is to give birth to himself.”

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“Erich Fromm speaks with wisdom, compassion, learning and insight into the problems of individuals trapped in a social world that is needlessly cruel and hostile.”

— Noam Chomsky 1928 CE –

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“Fromm's thought merits the critical attention of all concerned with the human condition and its future.”

— Anonymous 1
Freedom from the narrow boxes defined by personal history
from The Washington Post

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“Fromm is an original thinker. . . . His analysis of the causes of destructiveness is unique, and he has an enviable skill in the lucid presentation of intricate material.”

— Anonymous 1
Freedom from the narrow boxes defined by personal history
from Atlantic Monthly

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