Erich Fromm Quotes

What gives life meaning is a form of rebellion, rebellion against reason, an insistence on believing passionately what we cannot believe rationally. The meaning of life is to be found in passion—romantic passion, religious passion, passion for work and for play, passionate commitments in the face of what reason knows to be meaningless.

I believe that the experience of love is the most human and humanizing act that it is given to man to enjoy and that it, like reason, makes no sense if conceived in a partial way.

I trust that everything happens for a reason, even if we are not wise enough to see it.

If you think one piece of creation is better than another, you have completely lost it.

God is love, generosity and forgiveness; if we believe in this, we will never allow our weaknesses to paralyse us.

For life is the best thing we have in this existence. And if we should desire to believe in something, it should be a beacon within. This beacon being the sun, sea, and sky, our children, our work, our companions and, most simply put, the embodiment of love.

Sometimes if you want something badly enough, you can make it happen. If you miss someone so desperately that it wrecks your insides, you say their name over and over until you conjure then. It's called sympathetic magic and you just have to believe in it to make it work.

And all times are one time, and all those dead in the past never lived before our definition gives them life, and out of the shadow their eyes implore us. That is what all of us historical researchers believe. And we love truth.

I believe if we have something that we love to do, that can save our lives. That can get us through.

We want, or wanted, to believe that without love we would disappear, that love, somehow, would save us that, yeah, if we have love, give love and know love, we are truly alive and if there is no love, there would be no life. The Terror is, we know now, that even without love, life goes on... we just go on there is no mercy killing.

If you are bitter, it will eat you up and do you much more damage than the people who have hurt you

I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it's these things I'd believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.

I profoundly believe that the power of food has a primal place in our homes that binds us to the best bits of life.

Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.

I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love.

We are all our own graveyards, I believe; we squat amongst the tombs of the people we were. If we're healthy, every day is a celebration, a Day of the Dead, in which we give thanks for the lives that we lived, and if we are neurotic we brood and mourn and wish that the past was still present.

At that instant he knew that all his doubts, even the impossibility of believing with his reason, of which he was aware in himself, did not in the least hinder his turning to God. All of that now floated out of his soul like dust. To whom was he to turn if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love?

The sickness of the individual is ultimately caused by and sustained by the sickness of his civilization

Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it.

He who lives according to the guidance of reason strives as much as possible to repay the hatred, anger, or contempt of others towards himself with love or generosity. ...hatred is increased by reciprocal hatred, and, on the other hand, can be extinguished by love, so that hatred passes into love.

When we are no longer capable of love, we are no longer alive.

Happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.

If you didn't believe in objective truth, arguments would be just toys, or games, or jokes.

I like the idea of reincarnation. I'm not a true believer, but I think the idea is beautiful, that life just doesn't stop. For soulmates, it's the term that I'm a little bit skeptical of. As soon as you put a label on something, it seems like that's it, you're done. Obviously I believe in love and making it last forever, but what's beautiful about that is you don't know if it's going to last forever. When you don't know that this is it, you, I think, enjoy it more.

I have made the most important discovery of my career, the most important discovery of my life: It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reasons can be found.