Eric Berne Quotes

#1. Whatever you do, think of next morning's headlines.

Eric Berne

#2. Games are a compromise between intimacy and keeping intimacy away.

Eric Berne

#3. No man is a hero to his wife's psychiatrist.

Eric Berne

#4. Each person designs his own life, freedom gives him the power to carry out his own designs, and power gives the freedom to interfere with the designs of others.

Eric Berne

#5. Human life [is] ... a process of filling in time until the arrival of death, or Santa Claus, with very little choice, if any, of what kind of business one is going to transact during the long wait.

Eric Berne

#6. A winner fulfills his contract with the world and with himself. That is, he sets out to do something, says that he is committed to doing it, and in the long run does it.

Eric Berne

#7. It is better to be a slave to your beloved woman than a free man to the unloved one.

Eric Berne

#8. Pastimes and games are substitutes for the real living of real intimacy.

Eric Berne

#9. 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.

Eric Berne

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

Eric Berne

#11. We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs.

Eric Berne

#12. Every man must, in a measure, be alone in the world. No heart was ever cast in the same mould as that which we bear within us.

Eric Berne

#13. 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.

Eric Berne

#14. Such a woman is called "Mother's FRIEND" always ready to give judicious Parental advice and living vicariously on the experience of others

Eric Berne

#15. Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future.

Eric Berne

#16. A healthy person goes 'Yes,' 'No,' and 'Whoopee!' An unhealthy person goes 'Yes, but,' 'No, but,' and 'No whoopee.

Eric Berne

#17. Some say that one-sided love is better than none, but like half a loaf of bread, it is likely to grow hard and moldy sooner.

Eric Berne

#18. The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.

Eric Berne

#19. A loser doesn't know what he'll do if he loses but talks about what he'll do if he wins and a winner doesn't talk about what he'll do if he wins but knows what he'll do if he loses.

Eric Berne

#20. Love is nature's psychotherapy.

Eric Berne

#21. The destiny of every human being is decided by what goes on inside his skull when confronted by what goes on outside his skull.

Eric Berne