Erich Fromm

The privacy of our visitors to ErichFromm.net is very important to us.

At ErichFromm.net, we recognize that privacy of your personal information is important. Here is information on what types of personal information we receive and collect when you use visit ErichFromm.net, and how we safeguard your information. We never sell your personal information to third parties.

Log Files

As with most other websites, we collect and use the data contained in log files. The information in the log files include your IP (internet protocol) address, your ISP (internet service provider, such as AOL, Shaw Cable or others), the browser you used to visit our site (such as Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari), the time you visited our site and which pages you visited throughout our site.

Cookies and web beacons

ErichFromm.net does not use cookies.

We use third party advertisements on ErichFromm.net to support our site. Some of these advertisers may use technology such as cookies and web beacons when they advertise on our site, which will also send these advertisers (such as Google through the Google AdSense program) information including your IP address, your ISP, the browser you used to visit our site, and in some cases, whether you have Flash installed. This is generally used for geo-targeting purposes (showing Miami real estate ads to someone in Miami, for example) or showing certain ads based on specific sites visited (such as showing cooking ads to someone who frequents cooking sites).

DoubleClick DART cookies

We also may use DART cookies for ad serving through Google’s DoubleClick, which places a cookie on your computer when you are browsing the web and visit a site using DoubleClick advertising (including some Google AdSense advertisements). This cookie is used to serve ads specific to you and your interests (”interest based targeting”). The ads served will be targeted based on your previous browsing history (for example, if you have been viewing sites about visiting Miami, you may see Miami hotel advertisements when viewing a non-related site, such as on a site about football). DART uses “non personally identifiable information”. It does NOT track personal information about you, such as your name, email address, physical address, telephone number, social security numbers, bank account numbers or credit card numbers. You can opt-out of this ad serving on all sites using this advertising by visiting http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/dart_adserving.aspx

You can chose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies or third-party cookies in your browser settings, or by managing preferences in programs such as Norton Internet Security. However, this can affect how you are able to interact with our site as well as other websites. This could include the inability to log in to services or programs, such as logging into forums or accounts.

Deleting cookies does not mean you are permanently opted out of any advertising program. Unless you have settings that disallow cookies, the next time you visit a site running the advertisements, a new cookie will be added.

Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies.

As we ascend the social ladder, viciousness wears a thicker mask.

Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.

One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.

The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind - not the fiend or the sadist.

Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'

There is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself.

Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.

The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.

If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.

What is it that distinguishes man from animals? It is not his upright posture. That was present in the apes long before the brain began to develop. Nor is it the use of tools. It is something altogether new, a previously unknown quality: self-awareness. Animals, too, have awareness. They are aware of objects; they know this is one thing and that another. But when the human being as such was born he had a new and different consciousness, a consciousness of himself; he knew that he existed and that he was something different, something apart from nature, apart from other people, too. He experienced himself. He was aware that he thought and felt. As far as we know, there is nothing analogous to this anywhere in the animal kingdom. That is the specific quality that makes human beings human.

The kind of relatedness to the world may be noble or trivial, but even being related to the basest kind of pattern is immensely preferable to being alone.

Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.

To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.

Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.

More longer quotes can be found here. Of course, if you’d like to see a specific quote on this page, drop us a line.

This is a small collection of photos from Erich Fromm. If you have an interesting photograph, please let us know and we’ll add it.

An interview hosted by Mike Wallace in 1958

The Book Programme Interview (4 parts)

A radio lecture titled “How can conflicts be resolved without war?” from 1970 (5 parts)

A lecture on “The Automaton Citizen and Human Rights” at the American Orthopsychiatric Association in 1966 (3 parts)

Erich Fromm on the subject of love

If you have a suggestion, please contact us and we’ll add it right away.