Escape from Freedom

by Erich Fromm

positive freedom consists in the spontaneous activity of the total, integrated personality.

the artist can be defined as an individual who can express himself spontaneously. If this were the definition of an artist—Balzac defined him just in that way—then certain philosophers and scientists have to be called artists too, while others are as different from them as an old-fashioned photographer from a creative painter.

The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.

The inability to act spontaneously, to express what one genuinely feels and thinks, and the resulting necessity to present a pseudo self to others and oneself, are the root of the feeling of inferiority and weakness.

All genuine ideals have one thing in common: they express the desire for something which is not yet accomplished but which is desirable for the purposes of the growth and happiness of the individual.

The future of democracy depends on the realization of the individualism that has been the ideological aim of modern thought since the Renaissance.

We cannot afford to lose any of the fundamental achievements of modern democracy—either the fundamental one of representative government, that is, government elected by the people and responsible to the people, or any of the rights which the Bill of Rights guarantees to every citizen.

The irrational and planless character of society must be replaced by a planned economy that represents the planned and concerted effort of society as such.

We may call this new order by the name of democratic socialism but the name does not matter; all that matters is that we establish a rational economic system serving the purposes of the people.

Never have words been more misused in order to conceal the truth than today.

Man does not suffer so much from poverty today as he suffers from the fact that he has become a cog in a large machine, an automaton, that his life has become empty and lost its meaning.