People who, as children, were intellectually far beyond their parents and therefore admired by them, but who also therefore had to solve their own problems alone. These people, who give us a feeling of their intellectual strength and will power, also seem to demand that we, too, ought to fight off any feeling of weakness with intellectual means. In their presence one feels one cannot be recognized as a person with problems just as they and their problems were unrecognized by their parents, for whom he always had to be strong.

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.

The grandiose person is never really free; first because he is excessively dependent on admiration from others, and second, because his self-respect is dependent on qualities, functions, and achievements that can suddenly fail.

It is very difficult for people to believe the simple fact that every persecutor was once a victim. Yet it should be very obvious that someone who was allowed to feel free and strong from childhood does not have the need to humiliate another person.

Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on.

For the human soul is virtually indestructible, and its ability to rise from the ashes remains as long as the body draws breath.

Emotional access to the truth is the indispensable precondition of healing.