Erich Fromm Quotes

I'm very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people.

Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.

As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.

Men are not altogether bad or altogether good.

The courage of a great many men, and the virtue of a great many women, are the effect of vanity, shame, and especially a suitabletemperament.

Virtue in women is perhaps a question of temperament.

One of them is knowing the difference between Morality and Wisdom. Morality is temporary, Wisdom is permanent… Ho ho. Take that one to bed with you tonight.

It seems to me that responsiveness is a better source for understanding what moral claims are and how they work upon us.

There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.

Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice.

I think that as human beings we tend to compartmentalize, and we have a selective morality based on the situation we're in.

Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the virtues, which they have achieved in their own character.

You're more than Dauntless," he says in a low voice. "But if you want to be just like them, hurling yourself into ridiculous situations for no reason and retaliating against your enemies without any regard for what's ethical, go right ahead. I thought you were better than that, but maybe I was wrong.

People are either good or they're not. Religion doesn't make anybody good, I don't think.

Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man - in temperament, character, and capacity - and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no law can make us so.

If a man has no humaneness what can his propriety be like? If a man has no humaneness what can his happiness be like?

Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.

Virtue is health, vice is sickness.

What is a good man? A teacher of a bad man. What is a bad man? A good man's charge?

Reason is not measured by size or height, but by principle.

One's outlook is a part of his virtue.

Evil, which is our companion all our days, is not to be treated as a foe. It is wrong to cocker vice, but we grow narrow and pithless if we are furtive about it, for this is at best a pretense, and the sage knows good and evil are kindred. The worst of men harm others, and the best injure themselves.

There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one main point of honor and a few minor ones.