Quotes from Erich Fromm's book " The Sane Society "

The Sane Society Quotes Want to Read Rate this book 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars The Sane SocietyThe Sane Society by Erich Fromm 2,771 ratings, 4.25 average rating, 185 reviews Open Preview The Sane Society Quotes Showing 1-30 of 69 “That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.” ― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society tags: mental-illness, sanity, society385 likes Like “The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die - although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born.” ― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society tags: birth, death, self-development125 likes Like “Thus, the ultimate choice for a man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate.” ― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society 52 likes Like “It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas or feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing is further from the truth. Consensual validation as such has no bearing on reason or mental health. Just as there is a "folie a deux" there is a folie a millions. The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.” ― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society 35 likes Like “The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.” ― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society tags: future, history, robot, slaves, society27 likes Like “What kind of men, then, does our society need? What is the "social character" suited to twentieth century Capitalism? It needs men who co-operate smoothly in large groups; who want to consume more and more, and whose tasks are standardized and can easily be influenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority, or principle, or conscience - yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected, to fit into the social machine without friction.” ― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society tags: capitalism, conformity, groupthink, herd-mentality22 likes Like “Reason is man’s faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man’s ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man’s instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man’s instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.” ― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society 18 likes Like “We consume, as we produce, without any concrete relatedness to the objects with which we deal; We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.” ― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society tags: consumerism, society15 likes Like “Indeed the alienated person finds it almost impossible to remain by himself, because he is seized by the panic of experiencing nothingness.” ― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society 15 likes Like “Mental health cannot be defined in terms of the "adjustment" of the individual to his society, but, on the other hand, that it must be defined in terms of the society to the needs of man, of its role in furthering or hindering the development of mental health. Whether or not the individual is healthy, is primarily not an individual matter, but depends on the structure of his society.” ― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society 14 likes Like “Both the mentally healthy and the neurotic are driven by the need to find an answer [to the problem of human existence], the only difference being that one answer corresponds more to the total needs of man, and