We can never do the right thing as long as we are out to please someone else.

The true opposite of depression is not gaiety or absence of pain, but vitality: the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings.

He has given ample evidence of qualities hardly any other living statesman has demonstrated to the same degree: the courage to look facts in the face and to seek flexible solutions, respect for others, give-and-take in dialog situations, absence of hypocrisy, a complete absence of grandeur in the conduct of his personal life. He has never been driven by blind self-assertion to make absurd decisions.

The commandment to refrain from placing blame on our parents, deeply imprinted in us by our upbringing, skillfully performs the function of hiding essential truths from us.

Clinging uncritically to traditional ideas and beliefs often serves to obscure or deny real facts of our life history.

Almost everywhere we find . . . the use of various coercive measures, to rid ourselves as quickly as possible of the child withinus--i.e., the weak, helpless, dependent creature--in order to become an independent competent adult deserving of respect. When we reencounter this creature in our children, we persecute it with the same measures once used in ourselves.

Every child has a legitimate narcissistic need to be noticed, understood, taken seriously, and respected by his mother. In the first weeks and months of life he needs to have the mother at his disposal, must be able to use her and to be mirrored by her.