Meandering in thought . . .

Today is the birthday of Erich Seligmann Fromm (March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980), social psychologist, psychoanalyst and humanistic philosopher.

"Immature love says: I love you because I need you. Mature love says: I need you because I love you." - Erich Fromm

"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." - Erich Fromm

"Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending it. He has to find principles of action and decision-making which replace the principles of instincts. He has to have a frame of orientation which permits him to organize a consistent picture of the world as a condition for consistent actions. He has to fight not only against the dangers of dying, starving, and being hurt, but also against another danger which is specifically human: that of becoming insane. In other words, he has to protect himself not only against the danger of losing his life but also against the danger of losing his mind." - Erich Fromm

"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." - Erich Fromm

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

"The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots." - Erich Fromm

"Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others." - Erich Fromm

Fromm image source (1)