Erich Fromm Quotes

Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.

If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it.

While rationalism at the individual level is a plea for more personal autonomy from cultural norms, at the social level it is often a claim- or arrogation- of power to stifle the autonomy of others.

We are living in an age of mass individualism.

Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society…

The real conflict is not between a Church and State or between Catholicism and Americanism, but between a culture which is based on absolutism and encourages obedience, uniformity and intellectual subservience, and a culture which encourages curiosity, hypotheses, experimentation, verification by facts and a consciousness of the processes of individual and social life as opposed to conclusions about it.

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized opinions and habits of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

There has never been in history another such culture as … Western civilization…a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, … is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.

Civilization is only possible through the individual becoming part of the whole and just as collective authority in the interests of all limits the egoism of the individual ... it similarly has the right to implement such measures for the benefit of the community as are scientifically proved expedient in the way of population policy or eugenics.

I think this ... will demand, as a minimum condition, the establishment of a world State and the subsequent institution of a world-wide system of education designed to produce loyalty to the world State. No doubt such a system of education will entail, at any rate for a century or two, certain crudities which will militate against the development of the individual. But if the alternative is chaos and the death of civilization, the price will be worth paying.

Men have now arrived at such a high pitch of civilization that all institutions which act in any way to obstruct or thwart the development of individuals, and compress men together into vast uniform masses, are far more hurtful than in earlier ages of the world.

In an over-organized society, the individual is altogether crushed out of existence. He gains the whole wealth of social thought around him and loses his own soul.

The educated classes are possessed by the idea that in the social domain anything can be accomplished if only one applies enough force and is sufficiently resolute.

For fully developed imperialism, the individual no longer has value. He is valuable to it only as a member of the whole, as a soldier of an army.

… a system under which a few supposedly superior intellects, self-appointed, would direct the mating and the movements of the mass of mankind.

Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

You cannot control your own population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption.

The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.

Who indeed, after pulling off the coloured glasses of prejudice and thrusting out of sight his pet projects, can help seeing the folly of these endeavours to protect men against themselves? A sad population of imbeciles would our schemers fill the world with, could their plans last.

Keep the masses fed and entertain them to keep them in line.

The latest rule is: you cannot have protectionism - otherwise you will get a world war. Other rules say you cannot have collective ideas that involve the surrender of the individual to the group - otherwise, you get totalitarianism or, even worse, religion.

Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.

This is the gravest danger that today threatens civilization: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State, that is to say, of spontaneous historical action, which in the long run sustains, nourishes, and impels human destinies.

The means of communication, the irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which bind the consumers to the producers and, through the latter to the whole social system. The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood...Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior.

As long as each individual is facing the television tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege