19 Quotes by Donald Woods Winnicott

Creativity consists in maintaining a key aspect of the experience of childhood throughout one’s life: the capacity to create and recreate the world. Creativity is the omnipotence of the child’s mind.

The capacity to still feel wonder is essential to the creative process.

The precursor of the mirror is the mother’s face.

I would rather be the child of a mother who has all the inner conflicts of the human being than be mothered by someone for whom all is easy and smooth, who knows all the answers, and is a stranger to doubt.

There is for many a poverty of play.

I don’t mind saying in advance that in my opinion jealousy is normal and healthy. Jealousy arises out of the fact that children love. If they have no capacity to love, then they don’t show jealousy.

The scientific approach to the phenomenon of human nature enables us to be ignorant without bieng frightened, and without, therefore, having to invent all sorts of wierd theories to explain away our gaps in knowledge.

It’s only too easy to idealise a mother’s job. We know well that every job has its frustrations and its boring routines and its times of being the last thing anyone would choose to do. Well, why shouldn’t the care of babies and children be thought of that way too?

It’s a poor thing to be sane!