top of page
"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."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Philosophy quotes

"Think independently and critically, but never forget to think with understanding and love."

"Our life on earth is and ought to be material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly they are still entangled with the desire for ownership."

"A philosopher is a lover and searcher of truth, beauty, meaning, and wisdom."

"There is nothing wrong or right, only our thoughts make it so."

"I can resist everything but love."

"Opinion about religion might be different, but religion should be one and that is the well being of humanity."

"You may not be rich with money, Socrates was not, your life still has tremendous value."

"You are the center of your universe, without you nothing is there."

"Fear is the chain still wrapped around a free man's leg."

"The role of a philosopher is to create a better way for the future generations."
Explore more quotes by Erich Fromm

"Each new step into his new human existence is frightening. It always means to give up a secure state, which was relatively known, for one which is new, which one has not yet mastered. Undoubtedly, if the infant could think at the moment of the severance of the umbilical cord, he would experience the fear of dying. A loving fate protects us from this first panic. But at any new step, at any new stage of our birth, we are afraid again. We are never free from two conflicting tendencies: one to emerge from the womb, from the animal form of existence into a more human existence, from bondage to freedom; another, to return to the womb, to nature, to certainty and security."

"Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love. Where this active concern is lacking, there is no love."

"Why should anyone be so grateful for acceptance unless he doubts that he is acceptable, and why should a young, educated and successful couple have such doubts, if not due to the fact that they cannot accept themselves because they are not themselves."

"One is not loved accidentally; one's own power to love produces love - just as being interested makes one interesting. People are concerned with the question of whether they are attractive while they forget that the essence of attractiveness is their own capacity to love. To love a person productively implies to care and to feel responsible for his life, not only for his physical existence but for the growth and development of all his human powers. To love productively is incompatible with being passive, with being an onlooker at the loved person's life; it implies labor and care and the responsibility for his growth."

"The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots."

"The cruelty itself is motivated by something deeper: the wish to know the secret of things and of life."

"What is freedom as a human experience? Is the desire for freedom something inherent in human nature? Is it an identical experience regardless of what kind of culture a person lives in, or is it something different according to the degree of individualism reached in a particular society? Is freedom only the absence of external pressure or is it also the presence of something-and if so, of what? What are the social and economic factors in society that make for the striving for freedom? Can freedom become a burden, too heavy for man to bear, something he tries to escape from? Why then is it that freedom is for many a cherished goal and for others a threat?"

"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers."
bottom of page