Erich Fromm Quotes

I don't like that I'm my own commodity, that I am what I sell.

You see yourself as a good product that sits on a shelf and sells well, and people make a lot of money out of you.

Money commands everything because that's our interpretation of capitalism... what kind of world is that? It's a very uncomfortable interpretation of a human being. We have been turned into robots.

You can very easily be turned into a commodity. I've grown up with it.

I hate being thought of as a product.

We believe we are the consumers, but we are the consumed.

Everyone's life is for sale in America.

Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men and from nature. His main aim is profitable exchange of his skills, knowledge, and of himself, his "personality package" with others who are equally intent on a fair and profitable exchange. Life has no goal except the one to move, no principle except the one of fair exchange, no satisfaction except the one to consume.p97.

I don't mind being a commodity. It's given me a good life.

There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died.

Escape is a consumer goods like another

In an age robbed of religious symbols, going to the shops replaces going to the church. We have a free choice, but at a price. We can win experience, but never achieve innocence. Marx knew that the epic activities of the modern world involve not lance and sword but dry goods.

It's a business, and I'm a product. Terrible, isn't it?

Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.

I never bought the commercial thing, at any stage of the game.

... idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy in which man is reduced to one of his needs alone: consumption.

To sell yourself is somewhat debasing, and everyone is selling something.

Capitalism does not require us to hold a particular set of cognitive beliefs; it only requires that we act as if certain beliefs (about money, commodities etc) are true. The rituals are the beliefs, beliefs which, at the level of subjective self-description, may well be disavowed.

No shame, no solution, no remorse, no retribution, just people selling t-shirts.

I think one of the problems with the capitalist mainstream is this: no matter what you create to respond or resist it they will buy it.

It took a long time to understand why people were so interested in me, but I assumed it was because my wonderful husband had done a lot of wonderful work leading up to our marriage and our relationship. But then, over the years, you see yourself as a good product that sits on a shelf and sells well. People make a lot of money out of you.

Private property has made us so stupid and partial that an object is only ours when we have it, when it exists for us as capital ... Thus all the physical and intellectual senses have been replaced by ... the sense of having.

The world will try to tell you that you need stuff to be somebody. Don't listen

None of the activity stolen by work can be regained by submitting to what work has produced. - The Society of The Spectacle

Capitalism arose and took off its pajamas. Another day, another dollar. Each man is valued at what he will bring in the marketplace. Meaning has been drained from work and assigned instead to remuneration.