Erich Fromm, "The Art of Loving":
* Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort.
* Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one's
capacity to love.
* What most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular
and having sex appeal.
* Without his will he is born and against his will he dies.
* The deepest need of man is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his
loneliness.
* Mature love is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality. Love is an
active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men,
which unites him with others; love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it
permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity. In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one
and yet remain two.
* Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is "standing in", not a "falling for". In the most general way,
the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.
* Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.
* Love is a power which produces love; impotence is the inability to produce love. "You can exchange
love only for love, confidence for confidence".
* Genuine love is an expression of productiveness and implies care, responsibility, respect and
knowledge.
* Love is the active concern for the life and growth of that which we love.
* The essence of love is to ‘labour’ for something and ‘to make something grow,’ love and labour are
inseparable. One loves that for which one labours, and one labours for that which one loves.
* Love is the child of freedom, never that of domination.
* Love is active penetration of the other person.
* Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love
you."
* Unconditional love corresponds to one of the deepest longings, not only of the child, but of every
human being; on the other hand, to be loved because of one’s merit, because one deserves it, always
leaves doubt; may be I did not please the person whom I want to love me, may be this, or that – there is
always a fear that love could disappear. Furthermore, ‘deserved’ love easily leaves a bitter feeling that
one is not loved for oneself, that one is loved only because one pleases, that one is, in the last analysis,
not loved but used.
* If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life, If I can say to somebody else, ‘I
love you,’ I must be able to say, ‘I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also
myself.’
* Brotherly love is love for all human beings; it is characterized by its very lack of exclusiveness.
* The essence of motherly love is to care for the child’s growth, and that means to want the child’s
separation from herself. Here lies the basic difference to erotic love. In erotic love, two people who were
separate become one. In motherly love, two people who were one become separate.
* Love should be essentially an act of will, of decision to commit my life completely to that of one other
person.
* To love somebody is not just a strong feeling – it is a decision, it is a judgement, it is a promise. If love
were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes
and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgement and
decision?
* The affirmation of one’s own life, happiness, growth, freedom is rooted in one’s capacity to love.
* It is true that selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving
themselves either.
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