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Indeed, in the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.

— Erik Erikson

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Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: in William Bloom Personal Identity, National Identity and International Relations, Cambridge University Press, 18 March 1993, p. 37
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

More by Erik Erikson

Doubt is the brother of shame.

The Problem of Ego Identity (1956)

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.

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

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Topics

Life

More quotes by Erik Erikson

Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.

Childhood and Society (1950)

You can actively flee, then, and you can actively stay put.

All world-images are apt to become corrupt when left to ecclesiastic bureaucracies. But this does not make the formation of world-images expendable.

Gandhi's Truth : On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (1969)

When established identities become outworn or unfinished ones threaten to remain incomplete, special crises compel men to wage holy wars, by the cruelest means, against those who seem to question or threaten their unsafe ideological bases.

The Problem of Ego Identity (1956)

Children love and want to be loved and they very much prefer the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure. Do not mistake a child for his symptom.

Childhood and Society (1950)

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Attribution

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.