Erich Fromm Quotes About Giving

Quotes about: Giving

• Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself.

  Erich Fromm

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Men

  Man for Himself (1947) ch. 4

• Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.

  Erich Fromm

  Love, Romantic, Faith

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.141, Open Road Media

• Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous.

  Erich Fromm

  Love, Lying, Power

  "The Art of Loving".

• Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.

  Erich Fromm

  Life, Birthday, Character

  Man for Himself (1947) ch. 4

• Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.

  Erich Fromm

  Love, Family, Happiness

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.29, Open Road Media

• The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die.

  Erich Fromm

  Giving, Birth, Individual

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Sane Society Ils 252”, p.26, Routledge

• Well-being is possible to the degree to which one has overcome one's narcissism; to the degree to which one is open, responsive, sensitive, awake, empty.... Well-being means, finally, to drop one's Ego, to give up greed, to cease chasing after preservation and the aggrandizement of the Ego, to be and to experience one's self in the act of being, not in having, preserving, coveting, using.

  Erich Fromm

  Giving Up, Mean, Self

• Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking processes attempt to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of plausibility. This level of consciousness is supposed to reflect reality; it is the map we use for organizing our life.

  Erich Fromm

  Motivation, Real, Passion

• There is nothing inhuman, evil, or irrational which does not give some comfort, provided it is shared by a group.

  Erich Fromm

  Evil, Giving, Comfort

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Psychoanalysis and Religion”, p.39, Open Road Media

• Giving is the highest expression of potency.

  Erich Fromm

  Expression, Giving, Charity

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.28, Open Road Media

• Beyond the element of giving, the active characteristic of love becomes evident in the fact that it always implies certain basic elements, common to all forms of love. These are care, responsability, respect and knowledge

  Erich Fromm

  Giving, Facts, Elements

  ERICH FROMM (1956). “THE ART OF LOVING”

• In the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.

  Erich Fromm

  Lying, Expression, Generosity

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.29, Open Road Media

• Envy, jealousy, ambition, any kind of greed are passions; love is an action, the practice of human power, which can be practiced only in freedom and never as a result of compulsion.
  Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a "standing in," not a "falling for." In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.

  Erich Fromm

  Life, Fall, Passion

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.29, Open Road Media

• Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.

  Erich Fromm

  Inspirational, Motivational, Lying

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.29, Open Road Media

• The hoarders, who are anxiously worried about losing something, are, psychologically speaking, the poor impoverished people, regardless of how much they have. Whoever is capable of giving of themselves is rich.

  Erich Fromm

  People, Giving, Losing

• Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Love is not a spontaneous feeling, a thing that you fall into, but is something that requires thought, knowledge, care, giving, and respect. And it is something that is rare and difficult to find in capitalism, which commodifies human activity.

  Erich Fromm

  Art, Fall, Love Is

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

  Erich Fromm

  Life, Power, Men

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics”, p.52, Open Road Media

• We forget that, although freedom of speech constitutes an important victory in the battle against old restraints, modern man is in a position where much of what "he" thinks and says are the things that everybody else thinks and says; that he has not acquired the ability to think originally - that is, for himself - which alone gives meaning to his claim that nobody can interfere with the expression of his thoughts.

  Erich Fromm

  Men, Thinking, Expression

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.111, Open Road Media

• The criterion of mental health is not one of individual adjustment to a given social order, but a universal one, valid for all men, of giving a satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.

  Erich Fromm

  Men, Order, Giving

  Erich Fromm (2014). “The Erich Fromm Reader: Readings Selected and Edited by Rainer Funk”, p.74, Open Road Media

• If one admits that the influence of the outside world is essentially beneficial, the lack of such influence during sleep would tend to diminish the value of our dream activity so as to render it inferior to the mental activity that takes place when we are awake, when we are exposed to these beneficial influences of surrounding reality. But how can one say that the influence of reality is exclusively beneficial. Could it not also be damaging, and could its absence not give access to qualities superior to those that we have when awake?

  Erich Fromm

  Dream, Sleep, Reality

  Source: www.scribd.com

• We've wanted to produce more in the 19th century and the 20th century in order to give man the possibility for more dignified human life; but actually what has happened is that production and consumption have become means - have ceased to be means and have become ends, and we are production crazy and consumption crazy.

  Erich Fromm

  Crazy, Mean, Men

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• Love is the only way of knowledge, which in the act of union answers my quest. In the act of loving, of giving myself, in the act of penetrating the other person, I find myself, I discover myself, I discover us both, I discover man.

  Erich Fromm

  Love Is, Men, Giving

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.36, Open Road Media

• 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 abstract society as such, whose actions, thoughts, and feelings are the object of sociological research.

  Erich Fromm

  Real, Mistake, Hands

  "Psychoanalyse und Soziologie". "Critical Theory and Society : A Reader" by S. E. Bronner, 1989.

• The narcissistic, the domineering, the possessive woman can succeed in being a "loving" mother as long as the child is small. Only the really loving woman, the woman who is happier in giving than in taking, who is firmly rooted in her own existence, can be a loving mother when the child is in the process of separation.

  Erich Fromm

  Mother, Children, Long

  Erich Fromm (2000). “The Art of Loving: The Centennial Edition”, p.47, A&C Black

• The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self.

  Erich Fromm

  Giving Up, Loss, Self

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.190, Open Road Media

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