Erik Erikson
Psychologist
1902-06-15
Quotes by Erik Erikson
-
It's a long haul bringing up our children to be good; you have to keep doing that — bring them up — and that means bringing things up with them: Asking, telling, sounding them out, sounding off yourself — finding, through experience, your own words, your own way of putting them together. You have to learn where you stand, and make sure your kids learn [where you stand], understand why, and soon, you hope, they'll be standing there beside you, with you.
Read quote -
It's a long haul bringing up our children to be good; you have to keep doing that — bring them up — and that means bringing things up with them: Asking, telling, sounding them out, sounding off yourself — finding, through experience, your own words, your own way of putting them together. You have to learn where you stand, and make sure your kids learn [where you stand], understand why, and soon, you hope, they'll be standing there beside you, with you.
Read quote -
When we looked at the life cycle in our 40s, we looked to old people for wisdom. At 80, though, we look at other 80-year-olds to see who got wise and who not. Lots of old people don't get wise, but you don't get wise unless you age.
Read quote -
You've got to learn to accept the law of life, and face the fact that we disintegrate slowly.
Read quote -
In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.
Read quote -
The only thing that can save us as a species is seeing how we're not thinking about future generations in the way we live.
Read quote -
You see a child play, and it is so close to seeing an artist paint, for in play a child says things without uttering a word. You can see how he solves his problems. You can also see what's wrong. Young children, especially, have enormous creativity, and whatever's in them rises to the surface in free play.
Read quote -
I am what survives of me.
Read quote -
Children love and want to be loved and they very much prefer the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure. Do not mistake a child for his symptom.
Read quote -
Every adult, whether he is a follower or a leader, a member of a mass or of an elite, was once a child. He was once small. A sense of smallness forms a substratum in his mind, ineradicably. His triumphs will be measured against this smallness; his defeats will substantiate it.
Read quote -
There is in every child at every stage a new miracle of vigorous unfolding, which constitutes a new hope and a new responsibility for all.
Read quote -
In America nature is autocratic, saying, I am not arguing, I am telling you.
Read quote -
The fact that human conscience remains partially infantile throughout life is the core of human tragedy.
Read quote -
The American feels so rich in his opportunities for free expression that he often no longer knows what he is free from. Neither does he know where he is not free; he does not recognize his native autocrats when he sees them.
Read quote -
Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.
Read quote