Alice Miller Quotes

‘Nobody is born evil.’ – Alice Miller

‘Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on.’ – Alice Miller

‘A child too, can never grasp the fact that the same mother who cooks so well, is so concerned about his cough, and helps so kindly with his homework, in some circumstance has no more feeling than a wall of his hidden inner world.’ – Alice Miller

‘Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn.’ – Alice Miller

‘Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one’s own despised and unwanted feelings.’ – Alice Miller

‘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

‘If it’s very painful for you to criticize your friends – you’re safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that’s the time to hold your tongue.’ – Alice Miller

‘Those children who are beaten will in turn give beatings, those who are intimidated will be intimidating, those who are humiliated will impose humiliation, and those whose souls are murdered will murder.’ – Alice Miller

‘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.’ – Alice Miller

‘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