The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness

Erich Fromm

“Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair… To have faith means to dare, to think the unthinkable, yet to act within the limits of the realistically possible.”

The great humanistic philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm on human nature, the common laziness of optimism and pessimism, and why we need rational faith in the human spirit – wisdom from half a century ago, timelier than ever: