Erik Erikson Quotes

Babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species, and we grown-ups are production and marketing.

At birth, the child leaves a person - his mother's womb - and this makes him independent of her bodily functions. The baby is next endowed with an urge, or need, to face the out world and to absorb it. We might say that he is born with 'the psychology of world conquest.' By absorbing what he finds about him, he forms his own personality.

From the child of five to myself is but a step. But from the newborn baby to the child of five is an appalling distance.

Children don't have to be raised. They'll grow.

A child is a discoverer. He is an amorphous, splendid being in search of his own proper form.

A flower is not better when it blooms than when it is merely a bud; at each stage it is the same thing — a flower in the process of expressing its potential.

When I became a father, I think that my understanding of what love was and my connection to that emotion shifted. I saw my children being born and recognizing what they call a miracle.

Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child

I wondered how long it took for a baby to become yours, for familiarity to set in. Maybe as long as it took a new car to lose that scent, or a brand-new house to gather dust. Maybe that was the process more commonly described as bonding: the act of learning your child as well as you know yourself.

The biggest man you're ever going to see was once a baby.

Children learne to creepe ere they can learne to goe.

The child's conquests of independence are the basic steps in what is called his 'natural development'.

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

Every year, when you're a child, you become a different person.

A family's responses to crisis or to a new situation mirror those of a child. That is to say, the way a small child deals with a new challenge (for instance, learning to walk) has certain predictable stages: regression, anxiety, mastery, new energy, growth, and feedback for future achievement. These stages can also be seen in adults coping with new life events, whether positive or negative.

Children are monsters of unbridled egotism and will, for they spring directly from nature, hostile intimations of immorality.

The child does not begin to fall until she becomes seriously interested in walking, until she actually begins walking. Falling is thus more an indication of learning than a sign of failure.

A three-year-old is not half a six-year-old.

I was a physical education major with a child psychology minor at Temple, which means if you ask me a question about a child's behavior, I will advise you to tell the child to take a lap.

Raising a child is very much like building a skyscraper. If the first few stories are slightly out of line. no one will notice. But when the building is 18 or 20 stories high, everyone will see that it tilts.

All children are sweet at five. But at twelve they begin to get silly.

Children make the best measurements of time. It is only when I see the son or daughter of a friend or relative over periods of time, do I realize how much time has passed based on how much they've grown.

Whoever declares a child to be "delicate" thereby crowns and anoints a tyrant.

The unknown energy that can help humanity is that which lies hidden in the child.

I never thought I'd get to have children; to me [they're] just a miracle.