Erik Erikson Quotes

Quotes about:

• In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.

  Erik Erikson

  Feelings, Identity, Alive

  ERIK H. ERIKSON (1968). “Identity Youth and Crisis”

  278 Copy quote

• Life doesn't make any sense without interdependence. We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for us all.

  Erik Erikson

  Needs, Interdependence, We Need Each Other

  373 Copy quote

• The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others.

  Erik Erikson

  Know Yourself, Knows

  369 Copy 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.

  Erik Erikson

  Children, Creativity, Artist

  371 Copy quote

• There is in every child at every stage a new miracle of vigorous unfolding.

  Erik Erikson

  Children, Miracle, Psychology

  Erik H. Erikson (1993). “Childhood and Society”, p.255, W. W. Norton & Company

  223 Copy quote

• Adolescents need freedom to choose, but not so much freedom that they cannot, in fact, make a choice.

  Erik Erikson

  Choices, Needs, Facts

  289 Copy quote

• The richest and fullest lives attempt to achieve an inner balance between three realms: work, love and play.

  Erik Erikson

  Play, Balance, Three

  "Mindfulness in Everyday Life: Compassion and the Art of Having Fun" by Donna Rockwell, PsyD, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 2, 2013.

  238 Copy quote

• Play is the most natural method of self-healing that childhood affords.

  Erik Erikson

  Healing, Self, Play

  161 Copy quote

• The sense of identity provides the ability to experience one's self as something that has continuity and sameness, and to act accordingly.

  Erik Erikson

  Self, Identity, Ability

  Erik H. Erikson (1993). “Childhood and Society”, p.42, W. W. Norton & Company

  176 Copy 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.

  Erik Erikson

  Children, Mistake, Accomplishment

  "Childhood and Society". Book by Erik Erikson, 1950.

  207 Copy quote

• Children cannot be fooled by empty praise and condescending encouragement. They may have to accept artificial bolstering of their self-esteem in lieu of something better, but what I call their accruing ego identity gains real strength only from wholehearted and consistent recognition of real accomplishment, that is, achievement that has meaning in their culture.

  Erik Erikson

  Encouragement, Children, Real

  Erik H. Erikson (1994). “Identity and the Life Cycle”, p.95, W. W. Norton & Company

  197 Copy quote

• Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. Others have called this deepest quality confidence, and I have referred to trust as the earliest positive psychosocial attitude, but if life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.

  Erik Erikson

  Life, Hope, Insightful

  "Insight and Responsibility".

  191 Copy quote

• If life is to be sustained, hope must remain.

  Erik Erikson

  Anticipation, Life Is, Ifs

  Erik H. Erikson (1964). “Insight and Responsibility”

  106 Copy quote

• The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery.

  Erik Erikson

  Children, Reality, Playing Outside

  Erik H. Erikson (1993). “Childhood and Society”, p.222, W. W. Norton & Company

  143 Copy quote

• Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.

  Erik Erikson

  Life, Death, Children

  Erik H. Erikson (1993). “Childhood and Society”, p.269, W. W. Norton & Company

  153 Copy quote

• The strengths a young person finds in adults at this time-their willingness to let him experiment, their eagerness to confirm him at his best, their consistency in correcting his excesses, and the guidance they give him-will codetermine whether or not he eventually makes order out of necessary inner confusion and applies himself to the correction of disordered conditions. He needs freedom to choose, but not so much freedom that he cannot, in fact, make a choice.

  Erik Erikson

  Teaching, Order, Giving

  159 Copy 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.

  Erik Erikson

  Wise, Years, People

  132 Copy quote

• Personality, too, is destiny.

  Erik Erikson

  Healing, Destiny, Personality

  93 Copy quote

• If there is any responsibility in the cycle of life it must be that one generation owes to the next that strength by which it can come to face ultimate concerns in its own way.

  Erik Erikson

  Life, Being Strong, Responsibility

  122 Copy quote

• You've got to learn to accept the law of life, and face the fact that we disintegrate slowly.

  Erik Erikson

  Law, Faces, Facts

  26 Copy 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.

  Erik Erikson

  Children, Mean, Kids

  151 Copy quote

• Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit; for such mutilation undercuts the life principle of trust, without which every human act, may it feel ever so good and seem ever so right is prone to perversion by destructive forms of conscientiousness.

  Erik Erikson

  Children, May, Principles

  Erik H. Erikson (1993). “Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History”, p.70, W. W. Norton & Company

  111 Copy quote

• The fact that human conscience remains partially infantile throughout life is the core of human tragedy.

  Erik Erikson

  Tragedy, Facts, Life Is

  82 Copy quote

• Doubt is the brother of shame.

  Erik Erikson

  Brother, Doubt, Shame

  ERIK H. ERIKSON (1968). “Identity Youth and Crisis”

  37 Copy quote

• Let us face it: 'deep down' nobody in his right mind can visualize his own existence without assuming that he has always lived and will live hereafter.

  Erik Erikson

  Mind, Faces, Assuming

  Erik H. Erikson (1993). “Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence”, p.36, W. W. Norton & Company

  19 Copy quote

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