Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.
Erich Fromm

Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.
Erich Fromm

One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.
Erich Fromm

Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.
Erich Fromm

Sanity is only that which is within the frame of reference of conventional thought.
Erich Fromm

Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.
Erich Fromm

The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.
Erich Fromm

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

The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man.
Erich Fromm

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.
Erich Fromm

The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have.
Erich Fromm

The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind - not the fiend or the sadist.
Erich Fromm

The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.
Erich Fromm

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
Erich Fromm

The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
Erich Fromm

The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.
Erich Fromm

There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.
Erich Fromm

There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started out with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which fails so regularly, as love.
Erich Fromm

There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.
Erich Fromm

There is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself.
Erich Fromm