Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.

love life existence

About Erich Fromm

Portrait of Erich Fromm

Erich Seligmann Fromm (, German: [ˈeːʁɪç ˈfʁɔm]; March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) was a German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the United States. He was one of the founders of the...

More quotations from Erich Fromm

Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.

Man's main task is to give birth to himself.

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.

Rather than be confronted with an overwhelming proof of the limitations of our understanding, we accuse the dreams of not making sense.

If I am what I have and if I lose what I have who then am I?

power identity loss possession control

More quotations tagged with “existence”

To expect too much compassion from yourself might be a little destructive of your own existence. Even so, at least make a try, and this goes not only for individuals but also for life itself. It's so easy. It's a fashionable idiocy of youth to say the world has not come up to your expectations. "What? I was coming, and this is all they could prepare for me?" Throw it out. Have compassion for the world and those in it.

—Joseph Campbell

existence compassion

This is health: to have a body functioning so perfectly that when its few simple needs are met it never calls attention to its own existence.

—Bertha Stuart Dyment

attention existence health

The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and to wonder at it.

—Jacques Yves Cousteau

wonder existence happiness

Your world is so… big. And what am I compared to that? How could my tiny existence be enough for you?

—Avery Williams in The Impossibility of Tomorrow

existence world

I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.

—Sylvia Plath

existence heart listening breathing

History

28 Sep 2013 Added