The Art of Being Quotes

“A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his "normal" contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society. In the process of going further in his analysis, i.e. of growing to greater independence and productivity,his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves.”
― Erich fromm, The Art of Being

“If other people do not understand our behavior—so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being "asocial" or "irrational" in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them. How many lives have been ruined by this need to "explain," which usually implies that the explanation be "understood," i.e. approved. Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds, your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself—to his reason and his conscience—and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“Without effort and willingness to experience pain and anxiety, nobody grows, in fact nobody achieves anything worth achieving.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet “for sale,” who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence—briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing—cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“Perhaps most trivial talk is a need to talk about oneself; hence, the never-ending subject of health and sickness, children, travel, successes, what one did, and the innumerable daily things that seem to be important. Since one cannot talk about oneself all the time without being thought a bore, one must exchange the privilege by a readiness to listen to others talking about themselves. Private social meetings between individuals (and often, also, meetings of all kinds of associations and groups) are little markets where one exchanges one’s need to talk about oneself and one’s desire to be listened to for the need of others who seek the same opportunity. Most people respect this arrangement of exchange; those who don’t, and want to talk more about themselves than they are willing to listen, are “cheaters,” and they are resented and have to choose inferior company in order to be tolerated.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“تعتمد قوة موقع الإنسان في الحياة على درجة كفاءة إدراكه للواقع, وكلما نقصت كفائته يزداد تشوشه وبالتالي يتنامى شعوره بعدم الأمان, فيصبح بحاجة إلى أوهام يتكئ عليها ليجد الامان الذي ينشده. وكلما ازدادت كفائته تزداد إمكانيته في الوقوف على قدميه وإيجاد جوهره داخل ذاته.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“The basic for any approach to self-transformation is an ever-increasing awareness of reality and the shedding of illusions.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“I cannot know who I am, because I don't know which part of me is not me.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“People are confused and unsure, they seek answers to guide them to joy, tranquillity, self-knowledge, salvation―but they also demand that it be easy to learn, that it require little or no effort, that results be quickly obtained.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“The outer chains have simply been put inside of man. The desires and thoughts that the suggestion apparatus of society fills him with, chain him more thoroughly than outer chains.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“On whom am I dependent? What are my main fears? Who was I meant to be at birth? What were my goals and how did they change? What were the forks of the road where I took the wrong direction and went the wrong way? What efforts did I make to correct the error and return to the right way? Who am I now, and who would I be if I had always made the right decisions and avoided crucial errors? Whom did I want to be long ago, now, and in the future? What is my image of myself? What is the image I wish others to have of me? Where are the discrepancies between the two images, both between themselves and with what I sense in my real self? Who will I be if I continue to live as I am living now? What are the conditions responsible for the development as it happened? What are the alternatives for further development open to me now? What must I do to realize the possibility I choose?”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“كلما ضعفت ذات المرء تتعاظم خشيته من فقدانها أثناء التركيز على ماهو ليس ذاته.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“People are afraid to concentrate because they are afraid of losing themselves if they are too absorbed in another person, in an idea, in an event. The less strong their self, the greater the fear of losing themselves in the act of concentration on the non-self.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“Faith in life, in oneself, in others must be built on the hard rock of realism; that is to say, on the capacity to see evil where it is, to see swindle, destructiveness, and selfishness not only when they are obvious but in their many disguises and rationalizations. Indeed, faith, love, and hope must go together with such a passion for seeing reality in all its nakedness that the outsider would be prone to call the attitude 'cynicism.' And cynical it is, when we mean by it the refusal to be taken in by the sweet and plausible lies that cover almost everything that is said and believed. But this kind of cynicism is not cynicism; it is uncompromisingly critical, a refusal to play the game in a system of deception.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“لقد أصبح الكلام إدمانا: انا اتكلم إذا أنا موجود, أنا اتكلم إذا أنا لست نكرة, أنا أتكلم إذا لدي ماض, وعمل, وأسرة, وبحديثي عن كل ماسبق فإني أؤكد على ذاتي.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“The full humanization of man requires the breakthrough from the possession-centered to the activity-centered orientation, from selfishness and egotism to solidarity and altruism.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“One discovers answers to problems only when one feels that they are burning and that it is a a matter of life and death to solve them. Is nothing is of burning interest, one's reason and one's critical faculty operate on a low level of activity; it appears then that one lacks the faculty to observe.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“إن المعيار العام للنزوةهو أنها تجيب على السؤال: "ولم لا أفعل ذلك؟" وليس على السؤال: "لماذا أفعل ذلك؟”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“مالفرق بين حرية النزوة وحرية الإرادة؟
إن النزوة هي أي رغبة تخرج عفويا, ودون أي صلة بنيوية مع الشخصية الكاملة وأهدافها”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“Reality imposes its law on man, laws that he can only escape in dreams or in states of trance—or in insanity.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“Inasmuch as one cannot avoid bad company, one should not be deceived. One should see the insincerity behind the mask of friendliness, the destructiveness behind the mask of eternal complaints about unhappiness. The narcissism behind the charm. One should also not act if he or she were taken in by the others deceptive appearance in order to avoid being forced into a certain dishonesty oneself. One need not speak to them about what one sees, but one should not attempt to convince them that one is blind.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“Lack of concentration makes one tired, while concentration wakes one up.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“إن المعرفة بوجود الخراب والخداع والانانية واجبة, ليس فقط عندما تكون واضحة امامنا كالشمس, ولكن يجب علينا معرفتها حتى بأشكالها المختلفة المستترة ومبرراتها.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself—to his reason and his conscience—and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“It is desirable to avoid trivial and evil company altogether—unless one can assert oneself fully, and thus make the other doubt his own position.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“كلما تعاظم الشعور بالعجز وبنقص الإرادة الأصيل, كلما تنامى الخضوع أو الرغبة المهووسةبإرضاء نزوة المرء والإصرار على الاختيا.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“A free person owes an explanation only to himself, to his reason and his conscious, and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“One can hardly overestimate people's need to talk about themselves and to be listened to.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being

“What matters is the effect, not the process.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being