91 quotes
One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.
Human history began with an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.
Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.
Escape from Freedom (1941)
Man is the only animal that can be bored.
The Sane Society (1955)
To have faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only exceptional-individual phenomenon, is a rational faith based on the insight into the very nature of man.
The Art of Loving (1956)
All men are in need of help and depend on one another. Human solidarity is the necessary condition for the unfolding of any one individual.
The Art of Loving (1956)
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.
Man for Himself (1947)
Rational faith as well as rational despair are based on the most thorough, critical knowledge of all the factors that are relevant for the survival of man.
The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973)
Fairness means not to use fraud and trickery in the exchange of commodities and services and the exchange of feelings.
The Art of Loving (1956)
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.
The Art of Loving (1956)
On the whole, our modern ritual is impoverished and does not fulfill man's need for collective art and ritual.
The Sane Society (1955)
What is it that distinguishes man from animals? It is not his upright posture.
The need for the creation of collective art and ritual on a nonclerical basis is at least as important as literacy and higher education.
The Sane Society (1955)
Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.
The existential split in man would be unbearable could he not establish a sense of unity within himself and with the natural and human world outside.
The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973)
It is considered immoral to keep one "love" partner beyond a relatively short period of time. "Love" is short-lived sexual desire, which must be satisfied immediately.
The Sane Society (1955)
Exploitation and manipulation produce boredom and triviality; they cripple man, and all factors that make man into a psychic cripple turn him also into a sadist or a destroyer.
The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973)
Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.
The Sane Society (1955)
Psychoanalysis is essentially a theory of unconscious strivings, of resistance, of falsification of reality according to one's subjective needs and expectations.
The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973)
Neurosis can be understood best as the battle between tendencies within an individual; deep character analysis leads, if successful, to the progressive solution.
The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973)