Erich Fromm Quotes About Reality

Quotes about: Reality

• The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears.

  Erich Fromm

  Real, Love Is, Objectivity

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.119, Open Road Media

• An illusion shared by everyone becomes a reality.

  Erich Fromm

  Reality, Illusion

  Erich Fromm (2014). “The Dogma of Christ: and Other Essays on Religion, Psychology and Culture”, p.14, Open Road Media

• 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

• All great art is by its very essence in conflict with the society with which it exists. It expresses the truth about the existence regardless of whether this truth serves or hinders the survival purpose of a given society. All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society.

  Erich Fromm

  Art, Reality, Men

• Psychoanalysis is essentially a theory of unconscious strivings, of resistance, of falsification of reality according to one's subjective needs and expectations.

  Erich Fromm

  Reality, Expectations, Needs

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.150, Open Road Media

• Can one have love? If we could, love would need to be a thing, a substance that one can have, own, possess. The truth is, there is no such thing as love. Love is an abstraction, perhaps a goddess or an alien being, although nobody has ever seen this goddess. In reality, there exists only the act of loving. To love is a productive activity. It implies caring for, knowing, responding, affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing to life, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self increasing.

  Erich Fromm

  Love, Mean, Caring

• We have faith in the potentialities of others, of ourselves, and of mankind because, and only to the degree to which, we have experienced the growth of our own potentialities, the reality of growth in ourselves, the strength of our own power of reason and love.

  Erich Fromm

  Love, Reality, Growth

  Erich Fromm (2000). “The Art of Loving: The Centennial Edition”, p.113, A&C Black

• There is only one reality: the act of feeling ourselves in the process of making choices.

  Erich Fromm

  Inspirational, Reality, Choices

• Freedom is not a constant attribute which we either "have" or "have not." In fact, there is no such thing as "freedom" except as a word and an abstract concept. There is only one reality: the act of freeing ourselves in the process of making choices. In this process the degree of our capacity to make choices varies with each act, with our practice of life.

  Erich Fromm

  Reality, Practice, Choices

  Erich Fromm (2011). “The Heart of Man”, p.132, Lantern Books

• The activity at this very moment must be the only thing that matters, to which one is fully given. If one is concentrated, it matters little what one is doing. The important, as well as the unimportant things, assume a new dimension of reality, because they have one's full attention.

  Erich Fromm

  Reality, Unimportant Things, Littles

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.114, Open Road Media

• This Marxian sentence, repeated to the point of boredom, is misinterpreted. In reality [Karl] Marx was a "religious" man.

  Erich Fromm

  Religious, Reality, Men

  Source: www.scribd.com

• 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.

• 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

• I think what democracy means today, in reality, is to a large extent, manipulated consent - not forced consent, manipulated consent - and manipulated more and more with the help of Madison Avenue.

  Erich Fromm

  Mean, Thinking, Reality

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• Man can only know the nagation, never the position of ultimate reality.

  Erich Fromm

  Reality, Men, Position

• I believe that the fundamental alternative for man is the choice between "life" and "death"; between creativity and destructive violence; between reality and illusions; between objectivity
  and intolerance; between brotherhood-independence and dominance-submission.

  Erich Fromm

  Believe, Creativity, Reality

  Erich Fromm (1994). “On Being Human”, Continuum

• Knowing means to penetrate through the surface, in order to arrive at the roots, and hence the causes; knowing means to "see" reality in its nakedness. Knowing does not mean to be in the possession of the truth; it means to penetrate the surface and to strive critically and actively in order to approach truth ever more closely.

  Erich Fromm

  Mean, Reality, Order

  Erich Fromm (2017). “Fascism, Power, and Individual Rights: Escape from Freedom, To Have or To Be?, and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.328, Open Road Media

• Man can never stand still. He must find solutions to this contradiction, and ever better solutions to the extent to which reality enables him.

  Erich Fromm

  Reality, Men, Contradiction

  "Human Nature and Social Theory". Letter by Erich Fromm to Vladimir Dobrenkov, March 10, 1969.

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