Things are not as we would like them to be. There is only one way to deal with it, namely to try and be all right oneself.
Sometimes the most beautiful thing is precisely the one that comes unexpectedly and unearned, hence something given truly as a present.
Papa continually emphasizes how much remains unexplained. With the other psychoanalytic writers, everything is always so known and fixed.
Babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species, and we grown-ups are production and marketing.
If parents are the fixed stars in the child's universe, the vaguely understood, distant but constant celestial spheres, siblings are the dazzling, sometimes scorching comets whizzing nearby.
Siblings are the guarantors that the private childhood world - so unlike the adult world that scientists are only just beginning to understand it - is a fully shared and objective one.
The brain is highly structured, but it is also extremely flexible. It's not a blank slate, but it isn't written in stone, either.
Successful creative adults seem to combine the wide-ranging exploration and openness we see in children with the focus and discipline we see in adults.
We say that children are bad at paying attention, but we really mean that they're bad at not paying attention - they easily get distracted by anything interesting.
Historically, absolute IQ scores have risen substantially as we've changed our environment so that more people go to school longer.
The real excitement is collaborating with computer scientists and neuroscientists and starting to understand in detail how children learn so much so quickly.
One of the challenges is creating characters. I am trying to compose my sentences to express epic events happening to ordinary people.
Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.
Language cannot describe the scene that followed; the shouts, oaths, frantic gestures, taunts, replies, and little fights; and therefore I shall not attempt it.
Do not let anyone tell you that these people made work of play. They simply realized that the most fun lies in seeing and studying the unknown.
A general presumption that Icings will govern well, is not a sufficient security to the People... those who subjected themselves to the will of a man were governed by a beast.
'Tis hard to comprehend how one man can come to be master of many, equal to himself in right, unless it be by consent or by force.
Everyone sees they cannot well live asunder, nor many together, without some rule to which all must submit.
While I am interested both in economics and in philosophy, the union of my interests in the two fields far exceeds their intersection.
My real emphasis is on the farmers who are taking care of the land, the farmers who are really thinking about our nourishment.
The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by 500 readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the 500, he reaches the five hundred thousand.
