Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Deep responsiveness to the world inevitably includes sadness because much in reality is painful. Being open to others and the world means feeling their pain.
In plain terms
You can't care deeply about the world without feeling sad often.
What can you take from it?
Accept sadness as a natural part of caring deeply.

Where it applies

  • activism
  • caring professions
  • personal grief

Putting it to work

  • embrace emotional sensitivity
  • seek support networks

Questions to consider

  • How do you handle the weight of caring?
  • Is sadness a sign of empathy?

Another view

Constant sadness can lead to burnout if not managed.

More from Erich Fromm

  1. Psychoanalysis, which interprets the human being as a socialized being, and the psychic apparatus as essentially developed and determined through the relations…

    Permalink to quote #2
  2. It is often said that the Arabs fled, that they left the country voluntarily, and that they therefore bear the responsibility for losing their property and the…

    Permalink to quote #4
  3. The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, o…

    Permalink to quote #1

Related quotes

  1. Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same si…

    Samuel Langhorne ClemensSamuel Langhorne Clemens quote #131
  2. All for myself the sigh would swell, The tear of anguish start; I little knew what wilder woe Had filled the Poet's heart. I did not know the nights of gloom, …

    Anne BronteAnne Bronte quote #1
  3. The light has gone out of my life.

    Theodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt quote #1