Erik H. Erikson

"Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired."

- Erik H. Erikson

"The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others."

- Erik H. Erikson

"In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity."

- Erik H. Erikson

"Doubt is the brother of shame."

- Erik H. Erikson

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

- Erik H. Erikson

"Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death."

- Erik H. Erikson

"You see a child play, and it is so close to seeing an artist paint, for in play a child says things without uttering a word. You can see how he solves his problems. You can also see what's wrong. Young children, especially, have enormous creativity, and whatever's in them rises to the surface in free play."

- Erik H. Erikson

"You see a child play, and it is so close to seeing an artist paint, for in play a child says things without uttering a word. You can see how he solves his problems. You can also see what’s wrong. Young children, especially, have enormous creativity, and whatever’s in them rises to the surface in free play"

- Erik H. Erikson

"Self doubt is the brother of shame."

- Erik H. Erikson

"There is in every child at every stage a new miracle of vigorous unfolding."

- Erik H. Erikson

"Adolescents need freedom to choose, but not so much freedom that they cannot, in fact, make a choice."

- Erik H. Erikson

"Life doesn't make any sense without interdependence. We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for us all."

- Erik H. Erikson

"Life doesn’t make any sense without interdependence. We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for us all."

- Erik H. Erikson

"A creative man has no choice. He may come across his supreme task almost accidentally. But once the issue is joined, his task proves to be at the same time intimately related to his most personal conflicts, to his superior selective perception, and to the stubbornness of his one-way will; he must court sickness, failure, or insanity in order to test the alternative whether the established world will crush him, or whether he will disestablish a sector of this world's outworn fundaments and make place for a new one."

- Erik H. Erikson

"Babies control and bring up their families as much as they are controlled by them; in fact, the family brings up baby by being brought up by him."

- Erik H. Erikson

"No man can claim that he is absolutely in the right or that a particular thing is wrong because he thinks so, but it is wrong for him so long as that is his deliberate judgment. It is therefore meet that he should not do that which he knows to be wrong, and suffer the consequence whatever it may be."

- Erik H. Erikson