Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.
One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.
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.
The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.
Love, being dependent on the relative absence of narcissism, requires the development of humility, objectivity and reason.
Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.
Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the very same time the beginning of his freedom and development of his reason.
Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.
Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.
What most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal.
In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.
There is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself.
The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent.
Man's biological weakness is the condition of human culture.
Education makes machines which act like men and produces men who act like machines.
Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.
Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.
The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.
We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.
We all dream; we do not understand our dreams, yet we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sleep minds, strange at least by comparison with the logical, purposeful doings of our minds when we are awake.
There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.
Education is helping the child realize his potentialities.
The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.
Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.
Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.
There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or to be acted out under the guise of virtue.
Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.
The faculty to think objectively is reason; the emotional attitude behind reason is that of humility.
The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.
Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.
Immature love says I love you because I need you. Mature love says I need you because I love you.
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man.
We all dream we do not understand our dreams, yet we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sleep minds, strange at least by comparison with the logical, purposeful doings of our minds when we are awake.
Authority is not a quality one person 'has', in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him.
Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?
Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
Mans main task in life is to give birth to himself to become what he potentially is.
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
Dreams - A microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul.
The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind - not the fiend or the sadist.
Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.
Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.
Man always dies before he is fully born.
To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.
The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.
In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.
There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love.
