But a map is not enough as a guide for action; we also need a goal that tells us where to go. Animals have no such problems. Their instincts provide them with a map as well as with goals. But lacking instinctive determination and having a brain that permits us to think of many directions in which we can go, we need an object of total devotion, a focal point for all our strivings and the basis for all our effective - not only our proclaimed - values. We need such an object of devotion in order to integrate our energies in one direction, to transcend our isolated existence, with all its doubts and insecurities, and to answer our need for a meaning of life. Erich Fromm
Some Similar Quotes
  1. I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother. - Martha Gellhorn

  2. Self-talk reflects your innermost feelings. - Asa Don Brown

  3. Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not. - C.g. Jung

  4. How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole - C.g. Jung

  5. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. - C.g. Jung

More Quotes By Erich Fromm
  1. Love is a decision, it is a judgment, 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...

  2. Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an ordination of character which determines the relatedness of the person to the whole world as a whole, not toward one object of love

  3. Infantile love follows the principle: "I love because I am loved." Mature love follows the principle: "I am loved because I love." Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you.

  4. Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men and from...

  5. If other people do not understand our behavior–so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being "asocial" or "irrational" in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and...

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