Erich Fromm Quotes

Well, sanity, I suppose, is getting people to see the world your way.

Of course I'm crazy, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong

Where a bad custom has been in existence for any length of time, most people grow to regard it as part of the order of nature.

Sanity is not truth. Sanity is conformity to what is socially expected. Truth is sometimes in conformity, sometimes not.

A man is sane only to the extent that he subscribes to a previously-agreed construction of reality.

Sanity - a trick of agreement

When the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity; since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the madness on which the whole world happens to agree.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.

Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.

We assume in our daily lives that the world is both safe and sane. Otherwise, we could not carry on.

I think everybody's crazy, and if I'm the one being a little direct about it, that's fine by me.

Though I had success in my research both when I was mad and when I was not, eventually I felt that my work would be better respected if I thought and acted like a 'normal' person.

I would say any behavior that is not the status quo is interpreted as insanity, when, in fact, it might actually be enlightenment. Insanity is sorta in the eye of the beholder.

The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad.

There is no 'natural' order, only the way things are.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

It's important you don't lose touch with reality because, well, reality's the only thing you've got, really.

I come from a very conventional and non-political background.

It depends on who you talk to if I'm part of the establishment or part of the antiestablishment.

If the way I see the world is mad, then fantastic.

Society will pardon much to genius and special gifts; but, being in its nature conventional, it loves what is conventional, or what belongs to coming together.

Sanity is a matter of culture and convention. If it's a crazy culture you live in, then you have to be irrational to want to conform. A completely rational person would recognize that the culture was crazy and refuse to conform. But by not conforming, he is the one who would be judged crazy by that particular society.

Sanity is a compromise.

The world is so full of simpletons and madmen, that one need not seek them in a madhouse.

What is madness To those who only observe, is often wisdom To those to whom it happens.