52 Quotes by Eric Berne

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.

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.

The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours.

The position is, then, that at any given moment each individual in a social aggregation will exhibit a Parental, Adult or Child ego state, and that individuals can shift with varying degrees of readiness from one ego state to another.

Everyone carries his parents around inside of him.

If someone frankly asks for reassurance and gets it, that is an operation. If someone asks for reassurance, and after it is given turns it in some way to the disadvantage of the giver, that is a game.

The solitary individual can structure time in two ways: activity and fantasy.

Whatever you do, think of next morning’s headlines.

As this is written, a sow bug crawls across a desk. If he is turned over on his back, one can observe the tremendous struggle he goes through to get on his feet again. During this interval he has a ‘purpose’ in his life. When he succeeds, one can almost see the look of victory on his face. Off he goes, and one can imagine him telling his tale at the next meeting of sow bugs, looked up to by the younger generation as an insect who has made it. And.