Critical Period Quotes

Childhood constitutes the most important element in an adult's life, for it is in his early years that a man is made.

There are many who hold, as I do, that the most important part of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six. For that is the time when a man's intelligence itself, his greatest implement, is being formed. But not only his intelligence; the full totality of his psychic powers.

The development of the child during the first three years after birth is unequaled in intensity and importance by any period that precedes or follows in the whole life of the child.

Instead of trying to produce a programme to simulate the adult mind, why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child's? If this were then subjected to an appropriate course of education one would obtain the adult brain.

If a child in its first thousand days - from conception to two years old - does not have adequate nutrition, the damage is irreversible.

Innate mechanisms endow the visual system with highly specific connections, but visual experience early in life is necessary for their maintenance and full development. Deprivation experiments demonstrate that neural connections can be modulated by environmental influences during a critical period of postnatal development.

A time of historic change is no time for recklessness.

I have a formal education, but there's a whole lot you don't learn in school. And you only have so much time to figure it out. No matter how cerebral, celestial, how ethnic, there's a span of time here.

When kids are young, before the age of ten, there is a critical window of opportunity when their habits and motivations can be influenced.

The first 3 years of a person’s life determines the next 80 years.

The most important period of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six.

Ladies and gentlemen, I take office at a time in which the world is living in extreme contradictions.

Comrades - We are living in momentous times.

The next 10 years could be the most important in the next 10,000.

Giving teenagers some inspiration, a single role model and an opportunity to be part of something bigger at a critical point in their lives can be the difference between being a productive or being a destructive member of society.

The brain, which is plastic when young, must be exposed to certain sights early in life, or it will remain blind to those sights forever.

As children, we are remarkably aware. We absorb and process information at a speed that we'll never again come close to achieving... we are learning about our world and its possibilities.

The years from about eight to twelve constitute a unique period of human life.

It's easier to learn things for life by the age of 12 and not the age of 18. This is just my guess.

The 20s are like the stem cell of human development: the pluripotent moment when any of several outcomes is possible. Decisions and actions during this time have lasting ramifications.

The idea of critical windows extends beyond just vision, of course: almost every system in the brain has a critical window when it needs to experience certain stimuli, or it won't get wired up properly. The most obvious example is language: if you don't learn a language early on, it's nigh impossible to become truly fluent.

The first years of life are not just important; they are more crucial to shaping children than any other time. Even before they speak, children are extremely sensitive to the messages adults send them.