Quote

We don't yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people.

Alice Miller

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alice Miller
Age: 87 †
Born: 1923
Born: January 12
Died: 2010
Died: April 14
Painter
Psychologist
Sociologist
Writer
Piotrkow Trybunalski
Children
Grow
Would
Respect
Like
Learning
World
Parent
People
Grows
Subjected
Might
Humiliation
Without
Seriously
Take
Parents

More quotes by Alice Miller

Image
All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection
Alice Miller
Image
Empathy grows as we learn.
Alice Miller
Image
Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation.
Alice Miller
Image
Anyone who has ever been a mother or father and is at all honest knows from experience how difficult it can be for parents to accept certain aspects of their children. It is especially painful to have to admit this if we really love our child and want to respect his or her individuality yet are unable to do so.
Alice Miller
Image
We are still barely conscious of how harmful it is to treat children in a degrading manner. Treating them with respect and recognizing the consequences of their being humiliated are by no means intellectual matters otherwise, their importance would long since have been generally recognized.
Alice Miller
Image
The reason why parents mistreat their children has less to do with character and temperament than with the fact that they were mistreated themselves and were not permitted to defend themselves.
Alice Miller
Image
Child abuse damages a person for life and that damage is in no way diminished by the ignorance of the perpetrator. It is only with the uncovering of the complete truth as it affects all those involved that a genuinely viable solution can be found to the dangers of child abuse.
Alice Miller
Image
The more we idealize the past and refuse to acknowledge our childhood sufferings, the more we pass them on unconsciously to the next generation.
Alice Miller
Image
Clinging uncritically to traditional ideas and beliefs often serves to obscure or deny real facts of our life history.
Alice Miller
Image
Don't ever dare to take your college as a matter of course - because, like democracy and freedom, many people you'll never know have broken their hearts to get it for you.
Alice Miller
Image
Problems cannot be solved with words, but only through experience.
Alice Miller
Image
The free expression of resentment against one's parents represents a great opportunity. It provides access to one's true self, reactivates numbed feelings, opens the way for mourning and - with luck - reconciliation.
Alice Miller
Image
If we do not work on all three levels -- body, feeling, mind -- the symptoms of our distress will keep returning, as the body goes on repeating the story stored in its cells until it is finally listened to and understood.
Alice Miller
Image
An unacknowledged trauma is like a wound that never heals over and may start to bleed again at any time.
Alice Miller
Image
That probably greatest of narcissistic wounds -- not to have been loved just as one truly was -- cannot heal without the work of mourning.
Alice Miller
Image
Without realizing that the past is constantly determining their present actions, they avoid learning anything about their history. They continue to live in their repressed childhood situation, ignoring the fact that is no longer exists, continuing to fear and avoid dangers that, although once real, have not been real for a long time.
Alice Miller
Image
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.
Alice Miller
Image
You gotta keep that in check - you got to.
Alice Miller
Image
Genuine feelings cannot be produced, nor can they be eradicated. We can only repress them, delude ourselves, and deceive our bodies. The body sticks to the facts.
Alice Miller
Image
Today I should not be identified with any kind of regressive therapy.
Alice Miller