Erich Fromm — Quote from The Art of Loving
“The deepest need of man is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness.”
The Art of Loving (1956)
Concepts: loneliness, love, meaning
Resonant Quotes
- “Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. To be healed we must come...” — bell hooks, All About Love Fromm's diagnosis of human separateness as our fundamental problem finds its therapeutic resolution in hooks' vision ...
- “The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, fo...” — Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic Lorde's metaphor of joy creating bridges between people provides the exact mechanism by which Fromm's 'prison of alon...
- “Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of comm...” — bell hooks, All About Love hooks' concept of healing through communion directly answers Fromm's identification of separateness as humanity's dee...
- “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever ...” — Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan Both authors identify love as the fundamental human solution to existential isolation, with Vonnegut's 'purpose' dire...
- “For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of al...” — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet Fromm's diagnosis of existential aloneness finds its therapeutic prescription in Rilke's recognition that love repres...
- “The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is ...” — George Orwell, Reflections on Gandhi Orwell's acceptance that loving other individuals inevitably leads to being 'broken up by life' reveals the tragic pa...
- “To catch a glimmer of oneself in the other — this is the deepest joy the huma...” — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity Both philosophers locate human fulfillment in the recognition of oneself through another, with de Beauvoir's 'deepest...
- “The soul is healed by being with children.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot Both identify human connection as the antidote to existential isolation—Fromm diagnosing separateness as the fundamen...