Virginia Satir Quotes
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There are five freedoms: The freedom to see and hear what is; The freedom to say what you feel and think; The freedom to feel what you actually feel; The freedom to ask for what you want; The freedom to take risks on your own behalf.
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What lingers from the parent's individual past, unresolved or incomplete, often becomes part of her or his irrational parenting.
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No one's fingerprints are exactly the same as anyone else's.
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I have talked about choosing rather than acting from compulsion. When you feel that you have to live according to someone else's direction or live so that you never disappoint or hurt anybody, then your life is a continual assessment of whether or not you please other people.
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Many people are living in an emotional jail without realizing it.
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Our biggest problem as human beings is not knowing that we don't know.
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The full life is filled with vulnerability, not defense. You face whatever feeling there is.
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Rearing a family is probably the most difficult job in the world. It resembles two business firms merging their respective resources to make a single product. All the potential headaches of that operation are present when an adult male and an adult female join to steer a child from infancy to adulthood.
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I know people can change-right down to my bones, through every cell, in every fiber of my body-I now that people can change. It is just a question of when and in what context.
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I think if I have one message, one thing before I die that most of the world would know, it would be that the event does not determine how to respond to the event. That is a purely personal matter. The way in which we respond will direct and influence the event more than the event itself.
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Taste everything, but swallow only what fits.
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Put together all the existing families and you have society. It is as simple as that. Whatever kind of training took place in the individual family will be reflected in the kind of society that these families create.
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It's sad that children cannot know their parents when they were younger; when they were loving, courting, and being nice to one another. By the time children are old enough to observe, the romance has all too often faded or gone underground.
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The symbol in Chinese for crisis is made up of two ideographs: one means danger, the other means opportunity. This symbol is a reminder that we can choose to turn a crisis into an opportunity or into a negative experience.
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The greatest gift I can give is to see, hear, understand, and touch another person.
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In the nurturing family...parents see themselves as empowering leaders not as authoritative bosses. They see their job primarily as one of teaching their children how to be truly human in all situations. They readily acknowledge to the child their poor judgment as well as their good judgment; their hurt, anger, or disappointment as well as their joy. The behavior of these parents matches what they say.
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Parents teach in the toughest school in the word: The School for Making People. You are the board of education, the principal, theclassroom teacher, and the janitor, all rolled into two. . . . There are few schools to train you for your job, and there is no general agreement on the curriculum. . . . You are on duty, or at least on call, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for at least 18 years for each child you have. Besides that, you have to contend with an administration that has two leaders or bosses, whichever the case may be.
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The recommended daily requirement for hugs is: four per day for survival, eight per day for maintenance, and twelve per day for growth.
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Over the years I have developed a picture of what a human being living humanely is like. She is a person who understand, values and develops her body, finding it beautiful and useful; a person who is real and is willing to take risks, to be creative, to manifest competence, to change when the situation calls for it, and to find ways to accommodate to what is new and different, keeping that part of the old that is still useful and discarding what is not.
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Life is not what it's supposed to be. It's what it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.
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It is O. K. for me to feel angry and to express it in responsible ways.
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You have all played a significant part in my development of loving. As a result, my life has been rich and full, so I leave feeling very grateful.
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Adolescents are not monsters. They are just people trying to learn how to make it among the adults in the world, who are probably not so sure themselves.
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Families and societies are small and large versions of one another. Both are made up of people who have to work together, whose destinies are tied up with one another. Each features the components of a relationship: leaders perform roles relative to the led, the young to the old, and male to female; and each is involved with the process of decision-making, use of authority, and the seeking of common goals.