Erik Erikson

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.

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.

Men have always shown a dim knowledge of their better potentialities by paying homage to those purest leaders who taught the simplest and most inclusive rules for an undivided mankind.

Babies control and bring up their families as much as they are controlled by them in fact the family brings up baby by being brought up by him.

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.

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

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.

Genius as such can neither be explained nor treated away only at times its delay and inhibition and its perversion to destructive or self-destructive ends.

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

Do not mistake a child for his symptom.