Erik Erikson Quotes

I'm really disturbed by the degree to which I don't hear people saying, "Are we leaving the world better than we found it?" I think we are a generation that perhaps could not answer in the affirmative, and it is the evasion of the larger responsibility of being only one generation in what one hopes will be an infinite series of fruitful generations. There is a selfishness in refusing to understand that we are passing through; others will come, and they deserve certain courtesies and certain considerations from us.

Real leadership means tackling tough problems ourselves and not leaving them to our children.

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.

We owe it to our ancestors to preserve entire those rights which they have delivered to our care. We owe it to our posterity not to suffer their dearest inheritance to be destroyed.

We must all live so that our children do not have to pay for our deeds.

Why we should put ourselves out of our way to do anything for posterity, for what has posterity ever done for us?

Every generation inherits a world it never made; and, as it does so, it automatically becomes the trustee of that world for those who come after. In due course, each generation makes its own accounting to its children.

What every generation must do is try to make Europe better than it was in the past.

We've got a responsibility to live up to the legacy of those who came before us by doing all that we can to help those who come after us.

The most important question we must ask ourselves is, 'Are we being good ancestors?'

We are the ancestors of our grandchildren's children. We look after them, just as our ancestors look after us. We aren't here for ourselves. We are here for each other and for the children of our grandchildren.

I consider myself responsible to the coming generations, which are left stranded in a blitzed world, unaware of the soul trembling in awe before the mystery of life.

There are generations yet unborn, whose very lives will be shifted and shaped by the moves you make and the actions you take.

The World is not ours to keep. We hold it in trust for future generations.

Each generation is responsible to make the future of the next.

In greatness, life and death merge.

To some generations much is given. Of other generations, much is expected.

Perhaps a good resolution for the new year would be to keep asking what world we want to pass on to the next generation. Indeed to ask whether we have a real and vivid sense of that next generation.

The world is not given by our fathers but borrowed from our children.

Let us not only remember the past and its required sacrifice, let us also remember that we are responsible to build a legacy for the generations which follow us.

God has lent us the earth for our life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come after us, and whose names are already written in the book of creation, as to us; and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath.

What our Seventh Generation will have is a consequence of our actions today.

[Death is] a gimmick. It's the time-birth-death gimmick. Can't go on much longer, too many people are wising up.

You know this moment in time Is all my life Every day is each day that's passed Every person alive is everyone's who's died

What does our generation owe to generations yet unborn? ...there is an order in the universe which must be respected, and... the human person, endowed with the capability of choosing freely, has a grave responsibility to preserve this order for the well-being of future generations.