| The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996. |
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| NUMBER: | 21737 |
| QUOTATION: | Every adult, whether he is a follower or a leader, a member of a mass or of an elite, was once a child. He was once small. A sense of smallness forms a substratum in his mind, ineradicably. His triumphs will be measured against this smallness, his defeats will substantiate it. The questions as to who is bigger and who can do or not do this or that, and to whom—these questions fill the adult’s inner life far beyond the necessities and the desirabilities which he understands and for which he plans. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Erik H. Erikson (1904–1994), U.S. psychoanalyst. Childhood and Society, ch. 11 (1950). |
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| | | The Columbia World of Quotations. Copyright © 1996 Columbia University Press. |
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