Erich Fromm Quotes on Life
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Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending it. He has to find principles of action and decision-making which replace the principles of instincts. He has to have a frame of orientation which permits him to organize a consistent picture of the world as a condition for consistent actions. He has to fight not only against the dangers of dying, starving, and being hurt, but also against another danger which is specifically human: that of becoming insane. In other words, he has to protect himself not only against the danger of losing his life but also against the danger of losing his mind.
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Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.
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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.
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To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.
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We consume, as we produce, without any concrete relatedness to the objects with which we deal; We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.
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I believe that the nature of man is a contradiction rooted in the conditions of human existence that requires a search for solutions, which in their turn create new contradictions and now the need for answers. I believe that every answer to these contradictions can really satisfy the condition of helping man to overcome the sense of separation and to achieve a sense of agreement, of unity, and of belonging. I believe that in every answer to these contradictions, man has the possibility of choosing only between going forward or going back; these choices, which are translated into specific actions, are means toward the regressing or toward the progressing of the humanity that is in us.
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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.
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I believe in the possible realization of a world in which man can be much, even if he has little; a world in which the dominant motivation of existence is not consumption; a world in which 'man' is the end, first and last; a world in which man can find the way of giving a purpose to his life as well as the strength to live free and without illusions.
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Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived lives.
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Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies.
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That man can destroy life is just as miraculous a feat as that he can create it, for life is the miracle, the inexplicable. In the act of destruction, man sets himself above life; he transcends himself as a creature.
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The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have.
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There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started out with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which fails so regularly, as love.
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There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives to his life by the unfolding of his powers.
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There is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself.
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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.