Elizabeth Janeway Quotes

We are fashioned not by our genes, but by our environment - by the family and socio-historic conditions in which we evolve.

Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society and state in which we live.

Man is a child of his environment.

The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.

The functions of the family in a highly differentiated society are not to be interpreted as functions directly on behalf of the society, but on behalf of personality.

We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs.

Of course as children, we all, in all cultures and societies, learn behavior from observation, imitation, and encouragement of various kinds. So by the suggestion made, we all 'pretend' most of the time.

In fact, the socialization gives us the tools to fill our evolutionary roles. They are our building blocks.

We are such a product of our upbringing and environment.

A lot of times you're just conditioned by what's around you.

We're all products of our own environment.

Personality and socialization aren't the same thing.

Only as we live, think, feel, and work outside the home, do we become humanly developed, civilized, socialized.

I grew up in a house where there was lots of teasing and language play and laughter; it was very important. When I was a teenager, you wouldn't go to a bar and find lots of televisions everywhere. People were talking. Talk was the mental fire you would gather around in the evening. It occupied a big part of your existence.

Just because one brother is good and one brother is bad in the same family, we cannot say that the rest of the family is bad or good.

Man can never expect to start from scratch; he must start from ready-made things, like even his own mother and father.

School has never really been about individualized learning, but about how to be socialized as a citizen and as a human being, so that we, we have important rules in school, always emphasizing the fact that one is part of a group.

I've been to all 50 states, and traveled this whole country, and 90 percent of the people are good folks. The rest of them take after the other side of the family.

I don't deny the importance of genetics. However, the fact that I might be altruistic isn't because I have a gene for altruism; the fact that I do something for my children at some cost to myself comes from a history that has operated on me.

Childhood has definitely been invented, hasn't it? I think that's because people had children later, and we appreciate and cherish childhood a lot more.

A stable and nurturing childhood is essential for the healthy psycho-emotional and spiritual development of a human being. While we may understand what is supposed to happen to us physically, we must begin to better understand what happens to children mentally, emotionally and spiritually as a result of the families into which they are born.

All of us grow up in particular realities - a home, family, a clan, a small town, a neighborhood. Depending upon how we're brought up, we are either deeply aware of the particular reading of reality into which we are born, or we are peripherally aware of it.

Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.

First, they were bred when I was not capable to observe or before I was born; likewise the breeding of men is of a different manner from that of women.

We are somehow natured, not just to reproduce, but for sociality and even for culture.