Giving is the highest expression of potency.
~ Erich Fromm
Man absolutely cannot live by himself.
Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.
Modern man thinks he loses something-time-when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains- except kill it.
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
Free man is by necessity insecure thinking man is by necessity uncertain.
Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one's identity.
Human beings had two basic orientations: HAVING and BEINGHAVING: seeks to acquire, posses things even peopleBEING: focuses on the experience; exchanging, engaging, sharing with other people
We all dream; we do not understand our dreams, yet we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sleep minds, strange at least by comparison with the logical, purposeful doings of our minds when we are awake.
Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.
Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.
Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.
If I am what I have and if I lose what I have who then am I?
The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.
Man always dies before he is fully born.
Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.
Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?
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.
The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind - not the fiend or the sadist.
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.
The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent.
There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.
