Erich Fromm Quotes

Man is a wonder to himself; he can neither govern nor know himself.

Only the shallow know themselves.

Whoever claims to understand another person completely, is either entirely ignorant of himself, or else has a nature so small that he can measure it easily, and supposes it to be the standard of every other nature.

I was a little truth seeker as a child. I wanted more than anything to understand myself and also other people.

Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.

It takes longer for man to find out man than any other creature that is made.

The final mystery is oneself... Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul.

Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.

How can a man know himself? He is a thing dark and veiled; and if the hare has seven skins, man can slough off seventy times seven and still not be able to say: "this is really you, this is no longer outer shell.

Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.

And he who does not know himself does not know others, so it may be said with equal truth, that he who does not know others knows himself but very imperfectly.

I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And therefore I bid farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself: am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, to whom Nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny?

He who knows himself knows others.

We must remember that knowledge of one’s own deep nature is also simultaneously knowledge of human nature in general.

Every one is least known to himself, and it is very difficult for a man to know himself.

It is never possible to understand completely any other human being; and no individual will ever really understand himself - the complexity is too great and there is not the time to constantly take things apart and examine them.

So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them.

...you realize that you don't understand yourself any better than you understand anyone else.

Let me know myself; let others guess at me.

It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment.

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

The ultimate mystery is one's own self.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.