Erik Erikson quotes

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

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

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

#Children #Reality #Play

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

Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.
-- Erik Erikson

#Hope #Alive #Life Is

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

#Life #Death #Children

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.
-- Erik Erikson

#Baby #Facts

Farms and in castles, in homes, studies, and cloisters - where sensible people manage to live relatively lusty and decent lives, as moral as they must be, as free as they may be, and as masterly as they can be. If we only knew it, this elusive arrangement is happiness.
-- Erik Erikson

#Home #People #Castles

The American feels too 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.
-- Erik Erikson

#Opportunity #Expression #Liberty

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

#Choices #Needs #Facts

Personality, too, is destiny.
-- Erik Erikson

#Destiny #Personality