Eric Berne

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The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.
- Eric Berne
Collection: Nature
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A loser doesn't know what he'll do if he loses, but talks about what he'll do if he wins, and a winner doesn't talk about what he'll do if he wins, but knows what he'll do if he loses.
- Eric Berne
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Games are a compromise between intimacy and keeping intimacy away.
- Eric Berne
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The destiny of every human being is decided by what goes on inside his skull when confronted by what goes on outside his skull.
- Eric Berne
Collection: Destiny
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Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future.
- Eric Berne
Collection: Past
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Each person designs his own life, freedom gives him the power to carry out his own designs, and power gives the freedom to interfere with the designs of others.
- Eric Berne
Collection: Giving
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Each person decides in early childhood how he will live and how he will die... His trivial behavior may be decided by reason, but his important decisions have already been made: what kind of person he will marry, how many children he will have, what kind of bed he will die in... It is incredible to think, at first, that man's fate, all his nobility and all his degradation, is decided by a child no more than six years old, and usually three... (but) it is very easy to believe by looking at what is happening in the world today, and what happened yesterday, and seeing what will happen tomorrow.
- Eric Berne
Collection: Children
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A healthy person goes 'Yes,' 'No,' and 'Whoopee!' An unhealthy person goes 'Yes, but,' 'No, but,' and 'No whoopee.
- Eric Berne
Collection: Health
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Love is nature's psychotherapy.
- Eric Berne
Collection: Love
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Awareness means the capacity to see a coffeepot and hear the birds sing in one's own way and not the way one was taught.
- Eric Berne
Collection: Mean
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We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs.
- Eric Berne
Collection: Sad
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It is better to be a slave to your beloved woman than a free man to the unloved one.
- Eric Berne
Collection: Men
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The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours
- Eric Berne
Collection: Waking
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A winner fulfills his contract with the world and with himself. That is, he sets out to do something, says that he is committed to doing it, and in the long run does it.
- Eric Berne
Collection: Running
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Some say that one-sided love is better than none, but like half a loaf of bread, it is likely to grow hard and moldy sooner.
- Eric Berne
Collection: Love Is
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No man is a hero to his wife's psychiatrist.
- Eric Berne
Collection: Hero
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Whatever you do, think of next morning's headlines.
- Eric Berne
Collection: Life
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Losers spend time explaining why they lost. Losers spend their lives thinking about what they're going to do. They rarely enjoy doing what they're doing.
- Eric Berne
Collection: Thinking
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Every man must, in a measure, be alone in the world. No heart was ever cast in the same mould as that which we bear within us.
- Eric Berne
Collection: Heart
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Human life [is] ... a process of filling in time until the arrival of death, or Santa Claus, with very little choice, if any, of what kind of business one is going to transact during the long wait.
- Eric Berne
Collection: Life
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Such a woman is called "Mother's FRIEND" always ready to give judicious Parental advice and living vicariously on the experience of others
- Eric Berne
Collection: Mother