91 quotes
In erotic love, two people who were separate become one. In motherly love, two people who were one become separate. The mother must not only tolerate, she must wish and support the child’s separation.
The Art of Loving (1956)
The lack of objectivity, as far as foreign nations are concerned, is notorious.
The Art of Loving (1956)
The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology.
The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973)
If I am what I have and if what I have is lost, who then am I?
In order to grow out of the receptive into the productive orientation, he [man] must relate himself to the world artistically and not only philosophically or scientifically.
The Sane Society (1955)
The criterion of mental health is not one of individual adjustment to a given social order, but a universal one, valid for all men, of giving a satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
The Sane Society (1955)
I believe that the experience of love is the most human and humanizing act that it is given to man to enjoy and that it, like reason, makes no sense if conceived in a partial way.
Credo (1965)
Envy, jealousy, ambition, any kind of greed are passions; love is an action, the practice of human power, which can be practiced only in freedom and never as a result of compulsion.
The Art of Loving (1956)
Only if he [man] develops his reason and his love, if he can experience the natural and the social world in a human way, can he feel at home, secure in himself, and the master of his life.
The Sane Society (1955)
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.
I am convinced that boredom is one of the greatest tortures. If I were to imagine Hell, it would be the place where you were continually bored.
It is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society
The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973)
To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.
The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (1968)
Man can never stand still. He must find solutions to this contradiction, and ever better solutions to the extent to which reality enables him.
Human Nature and Social Theory (1969)
The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions.
Psychoanalyse und Soziologie (1929)
To love one person productively means to be related to his human core, to him as representing mankind. Love for one individual, in so far as it is divorced from love for man, can refer only to the superficial and to the accidental; of necessity it remains shallow.
The Art of Loving (1956)
I believe that none can "save" his fellow man by making a choice for him. To help him, he can indicate the possible alternatives, with sincerity and love, without being sentimental and without illusion.
Credo (1965)
I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.
Art of Loving (1956)
I believe that the fundamental alternative for man is the choice between "life" and "death"; between creativity and destructive violence; between reality and illusions; between objectivity and intolerance; between brotherhood-independence and dominance-submission.
Credo (1965)
The revolutionary and critical thinker is in a certain way always outside of his society while of course he is at the same time also in it.
Human Nature and Social Theory (1969)