16 Erich Fromm Quotes on Life

Erich Fromm quotes on life

7. 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.

14. Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.

18. 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.

20. To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.

27. 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.

54. 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.

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.

65. 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.

76. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived lives.

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

90. 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.

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

100. 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.

101. There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives to his life by the unfolding of his powers.

102. There is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself.

109. 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.