Erich Fromm Quotes

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points.

As long as a man had the courage to reject what society told him to do, he could live life on his own terms. To what end? To be free. But free to what end? To read books, to write books, to think.

For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity.

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact.

I think you're not a human being unless you have doubts and fears.

We breathe, we think, we conceive of our lives as narratives.

The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers.

I can get very philosophical and ask the questions Keats was asking as a young guy. What are we here for? What's a soul? What's it all about? What is thinking about, imagination?

Thinking no longer means anymore than checking at each moment whether one can indeed think.

Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.

We animals live life in all its glorious uncertainty. Why do politicians think they can control events?

No man's mind can possibly lie wholly at the disposition of another, for no one can willingly transfer his natural right of free reason and judgment, or be compelled to do so.

Every man is by … natural right, the master of his own thoughts

A philosophy of freedom must set out from the experience of thinking, for it is through this experience of thinking that a human being discovers his own self, finds his bearings as an independent personality.

I was absolutely blown away when I first talked to Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan at how ambitious they wanted 'Westworld' to be in looking at the drives that are leading human beings over the cliff of existence.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Children have their own mind.

I'm not a machine.

I have never been 100% confident that I am right about anything.

I think it’s just as likely that someone could say that this place, right here, is heaven, hell and earth all at the same time. And we still wouldn’t know what to do differently. Everyone just muddles through, trying not to make too many mistakes.

Man is really free, the real man cannot but be free.

I really think insecurity is something that comes with being an actor - I don't know actors who aren't insecure. I do think I kind of lie to myself - there is a percentage of ego involved. And I don't say that's a bad thing - it's good to know that it's there whether we like it or not. But ego is like a lion that we have to keep under control.

Sometimes it’s a sort of indulgence to think the worst of ourselves. We say, ‘Now I have reached the bottom of the pit, now I can fall no further,’ and it is almost a pleasure to wallow in the darkness. The trouble is, it’s not true. There is no end to the evil in ourselves, just as there is no end to the good. It’s a matter of choice. We struggle to climb, or we struggle to fall. The thing is to discover which way we’re going.

It is only certain that there is nothing certain, and that nothing is more miserable or more proud than man.

I doubt about myself. I think doubts are good in life. The people who don't have doubts I think only two things-arrogance or not intelligence.