The child has a primary need to be regarded and respected as the person he really is at any given time, and as the center - the central actor - in his own activity.

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

The truth about childhood, as many of us have had to endure it, is inconceivable, scandalous, painful. Not uncommonly, it is monstrous. Invariably, it is repressed. To be confronted with this truth all at once and to try to integrate it into our consciousness, however ardently we may wish it, is clearly impossible.

It is not true that evil, destructiveness , and perversion inevitably form part of human existence, no matter how often this is maintained. But it is true that we are daily producing more evil and, with it, an ocean of suffering for millions that is absolutely avoidable. When one day the ignorance arising from childhood repression is eliminated and humanity has awakened, an end can be put to this production of evil.

Wherever I look, I see signs of the commandment to honor one's parents and nowhere of a commandment that calls for the respect of a child.

The victimization of children is nowhere forbidden; what is forbidden is to write about it.

Parents are indeed capable of routinely torturing their children without anyone interceding.