Human Formation Quotes

I'm in the business of creating human beings.

The child is not an empty being who owes whatever he knows to us who have filled him up with it. No, the child is the builder of man. There is no man existing who has not been formed by the child he once was.

Indeed there are powers in the small child that are far greater than is generally realized, because it is in this period that the construction, the building-up, of man takes place, for at birth, psychically speaking, there is nothing at all - zero!

It is the child who makes the man, and no man exists who was not made by the child he once was.

The sons of Adam are formed from dust; if not humble as the dust, they fall short of being men.

The great constructive energies of the child ... have hitherto been concealed beneath an accumulation of ideas concerning motherhood. We used to say it was the mother who formed the child; for it is she who teaches him to walk, talk, and so on. But none of this is really done by the mother. It is an achievement of the child. What the mother brings forth is the baby, but it is the baby who produces the man. Should the mother die, the baby still grows up and completes his work of making the man.

Whatever helps to shape the human being - to make the individual what he is, or hinder him from being what he is not - is part of his education.

Of all the things in nature, the formation and endowment of man was singled out by the ancients.

A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an act of will and love on the part of other people.

Men are born, and then they're formed.

It is only by historical analysis that we can discover what makes up man, since it is only in the course of history that he is formed.

This is education, understood as a help to life; an education from birth, which feeds a peaceful revolution and unites all in a common aim, attracting them as to a single centre. Mothers, fathers, politicians: all must combine in their respect and help for this delicate work of formation, which the little child carries on in the depth of a profound psychological mystery, under the tutelage of an inner guide. This is the bright new hope for mankind.

I do believe in the power of story. I believe that stories have an important role to play in the formation of human beings, that they can stimulate, amaze and inspire their listeners.

Now an embryo may seem like some scientific or laboratory term, but in fact the embryo contains the unique information that defines a person. All you add is food and climate control, and some time, and the embryo becomes you or me.

The process of the body changing and making a whole human fascinates me.

Any organisation develops people; it either forms them or deforms them.

If someone arrives, fully functional yet a tabula rasa, how does their environment influence, educate, even mold them? And if that is a nurture question, then where does that character's nature fit in? How does that manifest?

Step back in time; look closely at the child in the very arms of his mother; see the external world reflected for the first time in the yet unclear mirror of his understanding; study the first examples which strike his eyes; listen to the first words which arouse within him the slumbering power of thought; watch the first struggles which he has to undergo; only then will you comprehend the source of his prejudices, the habits, and the passions which are to rule his life. The entire man, so to speak, comes fully formed in the wrappings of his cradle.

You're trying to form this human being that will fit the bill, and the human being becomes a hand, and the research is a glove, and you try to bring this character together into the research, mesh it, and create this person that is the sum total of all that endeavor.