In the words of Erich Fromm:
Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love.
Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.
Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.
There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.
The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
Human history began with an act of disobedience and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.
Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar, and you'll live as you've never lived before.
Education makes machines which act like men and produces men who act like machines.
The duty to be alive is the same as the duty to become oneself, to develop into the individual one potentially is.
If the handbag could think, it would have a terrific inferiority feeling, because, not having been bought, it would feel useless.
It takes a moment to tell someone you love them, but it takes a lifetime to prove it.
Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.
Independent of others and in concert with others, your main task in life is to do what you can best do and become what you can potentially be.
The aim of life is to be fully born, though its tragedy is that most of us die before we are thus born.
To love somebody is not just a strong feeling - it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.
Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the same time the beginning of his freedom and the development of his reason.
Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair.
That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.
The state of sleep is a state of freedom in which man is not occupied with the manipulation of the outside world.
The experience of separateness arouses anxiety; it is, indeed, the source of all anxiety.
The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots.
A dream is a microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul.
Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one's identity, in the many ways in which such violation is possible.
When blended with sexuality, the death instinct is transformed into more harmless impulses expressed in sadism or masochism.
Man does not only sell commodities, he sells himself and feels himself to be a commodity.
Happiness does not exclude sadness - if a person responds to life, he's sometimes happy and sometimes sad. What matters is he responds.
The affirmation of one's own life, happiness, growth and freedom, is rooted in one's capacity to love.
The human passions transform man from a mere thing into a hero, into a being that in spite of tremendous handicaps tries to make sense of life.
There is undoubtedly a difference between people who manipulate other people and people who create things.
The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology.
People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love - or to be loved by - is difficult.
For the most part, biophiliacs,lovers of life, are found among simple people, without pretensions.
It is time to cease to argue about God , and instead to unite in the unmasking of contemporary forms of idolatry.
If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.
We are not on the way to greater individualism, but are becoming an increasingly manipulated mass civilization.
Understanding a person does not mean condoning; it only means that one does not accuse him as if one were God or a judge placed above him.
There is nothing inhuman, evil, or irrational which does not give some comfort, provided it is shared by a group.
While every human being has a capacity for love, its realization is one of the most difficult achievements.
Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.
The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die.
Even the most sadistic and destructive man is human, as human as the saint.
The deepest need of the human being is to overcome our separateness, to leave the prison of our loneliness.
The scars left from the child's defeat in the fight against irrational authority are to be found at the bottom of every neurosis.
Society must be organized in such a way that mans social, loving nature is not separated from his social existence, but becomes one with it.
If it is a virtue to love my neighbor as a human being, it must be a virtue - and not a vice - to love myself, since I am a human being too.
We talk a great deal about Russia today, and I'm afraid that in twenty years, we and Russia will be more similar than different.
Power on the one side, fear on the other, are always the buttresses on which irrational authority is built.
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