A Hopeful Sanity

Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's self.

     Love is one aspect of what I have called the productive orientation: the active and creative relatedness of man to his fellow man, to himself and to nature. In the realm of thought, this productive orientation is expressed in the proper grasp of the world by reason. In the realm of action, the productive orientation is expressed in productive work, the prototype of which is art and craftsmanship. In the realm of feeling, the productive orientation is expressed in love, which is the experience of union with another person, with all men, and with nature under the condition of retaining one's sense of integrity and independence.
— Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, p. 37.

Just as a sensitive and alive person cannot avoid being sad, he cannot avoid feeling insecure. The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself, is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity, without panic and undue fear.
....
Free man is by neccesity insecure; thinking man by necessity uncertain.
— Erich Fromm, Ibid., p. 174.

     Having no faith, being deaf to the voice of conscience, and having a manipulating intelligence but little reason, he [alienated man] is bewildered, disquieted and willing to appoint to the position of a leader anyone who offers him a total solution.
— Erich Fromm, Ibid., p. 182.

In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead. In the nineteenth century inhumanity meant cruelty; in the twentieth century it means schizoid self-alienation. The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. But given man's nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become "Golems," they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life.
— Erich Fromm, Ibid., p. 312-313.

Every moment existence confronts us with the alternatives of resurrection or death; every moment we give an answer. This answer lies not in what we say or think, but in what we are, how we act, where we are moving.
— Erich Fromm, The Revolution of Hope, p. 18.

There are those, like Marcuse, who think that in a cybernated and "non-represive" society that is completely satisfied materially there would be no more human conflicts like those expressed in the Greek or Shakespearean drama or the great novels. I can understand that completely alienated people see the future of human existence in this way, but I am afraid they express more about their own emotional limitations than about future possibilities. The assumption that the problems, conflicts, and tragedies between man and man will disappear if there are no materially unfulfilled needs is a childish daydream.
— Erich Fromm, Ibid., p. 111.