These same experiences make of the sequence of life cycles a generational cycle, irrevocably binding each generation to those that gave it life and to those for whose life it is responsible. Thus, reconciling lifelong generativity and stagnation involves the elder in a review of his or her own years of active responsibility for nurturing the next generations, and also in an integration of earlier-life experiences of caring and of self-concern in relation to previous generations.

The fact that human conscience remains partially infantile throughout life is the core of human tragedy.

Personality, too, is destiny.

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

If there is any responsibility in the cycle of life it must be that one generation owes to the next that strength by which it can come to face ultimate concerns in its own way.

Play is the most natural method of self-healing that childhood affords.

The strengths a young person finds in adults at this time-their willingness to let him experiment, their eagerness to confirm him at his best, their consistency in correcting his excesses, and the guidance they give him-will codetermine whether or not he eventually makes order out of necessary inner confusion and applies himself to the correction of disordered conditions. He needs freedom to choose, but not so much freedom that he cannot, in fact, make a choice.