top of page
"But a map is not enough as a guide for action; we also need a goal that tells us where to go. Animals have no such problems. Their instincts provide them with a map as well as with goals. But lacking instinctive determination and having a brain that permits us to think of many directions in which we can go, we need an object of total devotion, a focal point for all our strivings and the basis for all our effective - not only our proclaimed - values. We need such an object of devotion in order to integrate our energies in one direction, to transcend our isolated existence, with all its doubts and insecurities, and to answer our need for a meaning of life."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Motivation quotes

"Live a life that will make you look back in old age at your life and grin in satisfaction."

"When people ask me how come I have written over three hundred books my response to them is take advantage of time."

"The Bible is the constant fountain for faith, conduct, and inspiration from which we drink daily."

"You are given the potential to excel, whether you do or not is entirely up to you."

"Every man has been called to produce a certain number of products within the time allocated to him to live on earth and failure to hit the target would mean a wasted life."

"Go all the way and let your soul be in what you are doing and there will be no limitations."

"The problem with dreams is that they are always futuristic and gives a deceptive impression that there is still enough time to actualize them. The tragedy, however, is that you soon realize that the time you thought you had to fulfill the dreams had melted away before your very eyes."

"I'm not going to be one of those people who sits around talking about what they're going to do. I'm just going to do it. Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia."

"Find the willpower to begin work."

"Ruth once wrote, “Dear Journal, Never let a single day pass without saying an encouraging word to each child . . .‘More people fail for lack of encouragement,' someone wrote, ‘than for any other reason."
Explore more quotes by Erich Fromm

"Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?"

"Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self."

"If America and the Western world continue in their state of unconscious hopelessness, lack of faith and of fortitude, it is predictable that they will not be able to resist the temptation of the big bang by nuclear weapons, which would end all problems - overpopulation, boredom, and hunger - since it would do away with all life."

"The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst must emphasize that the subject of sociology, society, in reality[,] consists of individuals, and that it is these human beings, rather than an abstract society as such, whose actions, thoughts, and feelings are the object of sociological research."Psychoanalysis and sociology. Pp. 37-39 inCritical theory and society: A reader, edited by S. Bronner and D. Kellner. New York: Routledge."

"The development of man's intellectual capacities has far outstripped the development of his emotions. Man's brain lives in the twentieth century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age. The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself."

"What the psychological analysis of doctrines can show is the subjective motivations which make a person aware of certain problems and make him seek answers in certain directions. Any kind of thought, true or false, is motivated by the subjective needs and interests of the person who is thinking. It happens that some interests are furthered by finding the truth, others by destroying it."

"Jesus and Satan appear here as repre sentatives of two opposite principles. Satan is the representative of material consumption and of power over nature and Man. Jesus is the representative of being, and of the idea that not-having is the premise for being. The world has followed Satan's principles, since the time of the gospels."

"To love somebody is not just a strong feeling-it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision?"

"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."
bottom of page