Erik Erikson Quotes

I believe a child's most important job is to explore the world around them through play.

In play, a child is always above his average age, above his daily behavior; in play, it is as though he were a head taller than himself.

Children have such vibrant minds. They need to play. They need to be creative. They need to imagine. It's so important for their sense of self discovery. And it helps them learn problem-solving.

Play is the work of children. It's very serious stuff.

While the sciences are hugely important, let us not leave behind a child's imagination.

Sendak's 1963 classic 'Where The Wild Things Are' has long been a favorite of mine because of the creative imagery, fantastic adventures and, most of all, because of how this timeless story shows us that children need to be free to roam, explore and invent in order to understand their place in the world that surrounds them.

A child's greatest achievements are possible in play, achievements that tomorrow will become her basic level of real action.

Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.

We explore our environment, more than we are compelled to utter poetry, when we're toddlers. We start doing that later. Before that happens, every child is a scientist.

Children need to move to develop their brain; it's a natural urge. That's why boys will run after a ball and play soccer despite how many video games are available to them, and they can't help themselves from building with Lego bricks as well. They want to be creating something that's uniquely their own.

Children are just little scientists.

All children have creative power.

I am writing to make sure that kids don't lose very important traits like curiosity that can drive social change because oftentimes I think parents emphasise more on doing well in school, which is important, but perhaps that sometimes comes at the cost of a child's natural curiosity.

I don't care what town you're born in, what city, what country. If you're a child, you are curious about your environment. You're overturning rocks. You're plucking leaves off of trees and petals off of flowers, looking inside, and you're doing things that create disorder in the lives of the adults around you.

I think poetry can help children deal with the other subjects on the curriculum by enabling them to see a subject in a new way.

The coming of the kids hasn't come out in my art yet.

Lego allows all levels of complexity. But a child can do their own thing at any level. They can built a pirate ship, for example, and then mash it up with completely different things.

When kids play, they are working on imagining the kind of world we live in.

The artist's world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.

If you watch young children play, you will notice that they create games, characters, situations, whole worlds in which they immerse themselves with intense concentration.

I think we want our kids to grow up to be people who can think outside of the box, be creative and innovators, sort of the forward-thinkers of our future. I think a way to inspire that is through art and music.

Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.

To a child, often the box a toy came in is more appealing than the toy itself.

There's a variety and depth to the song topics I get to write about in children's music and books: being able to write about things I wouldn't normally write about, like a disappointing pancake, or monsters or opposite day is really different than writing about heartbreak and relationships.

I think it's necessary to let kids get bored once in a while - that's how they learn to be creative.