Life at a Low Ebb (Erich Fromm)

Today, our love of life has sunk to a low ebb. Any behaviour that does not serve a person's growth, his progress towards complete self realisation, takes it's toll. The exploiter fears the exploited. The murderer fears the isolation his deeds condemns him to. The destroyer fears his conscience. The joyless consumer fears living without being truely alive.

Erich Fromm

On Faith in Oneself (Erich Fromm)

You have to have faith in yourself, to be able to think critically, to be an independant human being, a human being and not a sheep. To achieve that, to learn "the art of living and of dying" takes a lot of effort, practise and patience. Like any other skill, it has to be learned. Anyone whose growth takes this direction will also develop the ability to know what is good - or bad - for himself and others, good or bad for him as a human being, not good or bad for his success, his acquisition of power or of goods.

Erich Fromm

On Talking (Erich Fromm)

If two people talk together and both of them remain the same people they were before, then they haven't really talked at all. They have simply engaged in an exchange of words.

Erich Fromm

The Art and Joy of Conversation (Erich Fromm)

...these things [the art and joy of conversation] will become possible again only if we can rid ourselves of our monomaniacal, goal-oriented way of life. We need to cultivate attitudes that recognise the expression and full realisation of human potential [his emphasis] as the only worthwhile goals in life. To put it in the simplest possible terms: What matters is being as opposed to having; to just using and consuming and getting ahead.

Erich Fromm

Forgetting the Self (Erich Fromm)

Once we can forget the self as the prime focus of our interest and once we experience ourselves as acting, feeling, non-alienated human beings, then the world becomes the prime focus of our interest, our concern, our creative energies.

...We can best practise self-analysis the first thing each morning, combining it with the kind of breathing and concentration exercises used in Buddhist meditation. The important thing is to step back from the bustle of life, to come to ourselves, to stop reacting constantly to stimuli, to make ourselves "empty" so that we can become active within ourselves.

Anyone who attempts this will, I think, experience a deepening of his capacity to feel; he will experience "healing", a recovery of health, not in the medical sense but in a profound human sense. But this process requires patience, and patience is certainly not a commodity we have in great abundance. To any and all who want to make the attempt, though, I wish the best of luck.

Erich Fromm

On Effort (Erich Fromm)

Anyone who fears effort, anyone who backs off from frustration and possibly even pain will never get anywhere.

Erich Fromm

On Evil (Erich Fromm)

Evil is a human thing. Arising from intelligence, greed and a lack of empathy.

Erich Fromm, For The Love of Life