Quote #55

I believe that the fundamental alternative for man is the choice between 'life' and 'death'; between creativity and destructive violence; between reality and illusions; between objectivity and intolerance; between brotherhood-independence and dominance-submission.

More from Erich Fromm

  1. I believe that the nature of man is a contradiction rooted in the conditions of human existence that requires a search for solutions, which…
  2. By necrophilia is meant love for all that is violence and destruction; the desire to kill; the worship of force; attraction to death, to su…
  3. I believe that man is the product of natural evolution that is born from the conflict of being a prisoner and separated from nature, and fr…
  4. By narcissism is meant ceasing to have an authentic interest in the outside world but instead an intense attachment to oneself, to one's ow…
  5. 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 c…
  6. By incestuous symbiosis is meant the tendency to stay tied to the mother and to her equivalents - blood, family, tribe - to fly from the un…
  7. To speak of love is not 'preaching,' for the simple reason that it means to speak of the ultimate and real need of every human being. That …
  8. I believe that the man choosing progress can find a new unity through the full development of all his human forces, which are produced in t…

All Erich Fromm quotes