Millions are impressed by the victories of power and take it for the sign of strength. To be sure, power over people is an expression of superior strength in a purely material sense. If I have the power over another person to kill him, I am "stronger" than he is. But in a psychological sense, the lust for power is not rooted in strength but in weakness. It is the expression of inability of the individual self to stand alone and live. It is the desperate attempt to gain secondary strength where genuine strength is lacking.

About This Quote

About Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm was a 19th-century American american sociologist and psychoanalyst. Erich Seligmann Fromm was a German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the United States. Read more on Wikipedia →

Themes

  • Power — The dynamics of influence, authority, and leadership

More quotes by Erich Fromm

Related Quotes