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Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit; for such mutilation undercuts the life principle of trust, without which every human act, may it feel ever so good and seem ever so right is prone to perversion by destructive forms of conscientiousness.

— Erik Erikson Young Man Luther : A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (1958)

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Source: Young Man Luther : A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (1958), p. 70
Work: Young Man Luther : A Study in Psychoanalysis and History, 1958
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Erik Erikson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.