Nathaniel Branden Quotes

Western parents worry a lot about their children's self-esteem. But as a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up. On the flip side, there's nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn't.

A parent does not do everything for their kid. A parent that does everything for their kid produces a kid with no self-confidence. If our parents fixed everything for us and did not allow us to do anything on our own, or intervened every single time, we would all grow up to be completely dependent. The reason we grow up to be healthy adults is because our parents played this game of giving us responsibility, disciplining us when necessary, letting us try, letting us fail.

What the majority of American children needs is to stop being pampered, stop being indulged, stop being chauffeured, stop being catered to. In the final analysis, it is not what you do for you children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.

Parents teach children discipline for two different, indeed diametrically opposed, reasons: to render the child submissive to them and to make him independent of them. Only a self-disciplined person can be obedient; and only such a person can be autonomous.

If children gave up when they fell for the first time, they would never learn to walk.

Children should have enough freedom to be themselves - once they've learned the rules.

What a child can do in cooperation today, he can do alone tomorrow.

Learn the duty as well as taste the pleasure of original work.

There is always time for failure.

Generally, I like making my own mistakes and learning from them because that's what I think life is about.

I have very little patience with children.

Everything is a learning process: any time you fall over, it's just teaching you to stand up the next time.

I have an equal amount of patience as my grade-school children, which is not great.

Kids teach you a lot of patience.

At every step the child should be allowed to meet the real experience of life; the thorns should never be plucked from his roses.

I think it's very important to teach your children to struggle on some level.

I'm my own boss, my own editor, my own shooter, my own writer, everything. This is all stuff I learned through trial and error... failing at a lot of things has taught me how to succeed at them eventually... you roll with the punches.

Fighting taught me, I learned from life. It's a school, I'm still learning.

I wouldn't be where I am right now, and have the right work ethic and discipline, if it weren't for all the indie films I did. We weren't pampered and were pretty much on our own.

You learn a lot about yourself when things aren't going well. It's always good to be the underdog.

It's funny that I love golf so much because I'm not usually drawn to things I'm not so good at. It's all about practice and working and not getting discouraged.

I've failed hundreds of thousands of times.

Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures.

If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things.

If babies held the same tendency toward self-criticism as adults, they might never learn to walk or talk. Can you imagine infants stomping, 'Aarggh! Screwed up again!' Fortunately, babies are free of self-criticism. They just keep practicing.