Top 160 Edith Eger Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “El tiempo no cura. Lo que cura es lo que haces con el tiempo.”

— Edith Eger

2. “Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis.”

— Edith Eger

3. “Here you are! In the sacred present. I can’t heal you – or anyone – but I can celebrate your choice to dismantle the prison in your mind, brick by brick. You can’t change what happened, you can’t change what you did or what was done to you. But you can choose how you live now. My precious, you can choose to be free.”

— Edith Eger

4. “Su mensaje es claro: tenemos la capacidad de escapar de las prisiones que construimos en nuestras mentes y podemos elegir ser libres, sean cuales sean las circunstancias de nuestra vida.”

— Edith Eger

5. “Change is about noticing what’s no longer working and stepping out of the familiar, imprisoning patterns.”

— Edith Eger

6. “When you can’t go in through a door, go in through a window.”

— Edith Eger

7. “Our best teachers. The most toxic, obnoxious people in our lives can be our best teachers. The next time you’re in the presence of someone who irks or offends you, soften your eyes and tell yourself, “Human, no more, no less. Human, like me.” Then ask, “What are you here to teach me?”

— Edith Eger

8. “I can’t say that everything happens for a reason, that there’s a purpose in injustice or suffering. But I can say that pain, hardship, and suffering are the gift that helps us grow and learn and become who we are meant to be.”

— Edith Eger

9. “In contrast, victimhood comes from the inside. No one can make you a victim but you. We become victims not because of what happens to us but when we choose to hold on to our victimization. We develop a victim’s mind – a way of thinking and being that is rigid, blaming, pessimistic, stuck in the past, unforgiving, punitive, and without healthy limits or boundaries. We become our own jailors when we choose the confines of the victim’s mind.”

— Edith Eger

10. “Romantic love is temporary. Real love is not what you feel, it’s what you do.”

— Edith Eger

11. “When a child is grappling with anorexia, the identified patient is the child, but the real patient is the family.”

— Edith Eger

12. “Our painful experiences aren’t a liability – they’re a gift.”

— Edith Eger

13. “We can’t choose to vanish the dark, but we can choose to kindle the light.”

— Edith Eger

14. “Ser pasiva es permitir que otros decidan por ti. Ser agresiva es decidir por los otros. Ser asertiva es decidir por ti misma.”

— Edith Eger

15. “Just remember,” she says, “no one can take away from you what you’ve put in your mind.”

— Edith Eger

16. “No podemos borrar el dolor. Pero somos libres de aceptar lo que somos y lo que nos han hecho y avanzar.”

— Edith Eger

17. “Suppressing the feelings only makes it harder to let them go. Expression is the opposite of depression.”

— Edith Eger

18. “Hope is the boldest act of imagination I know.”

— Edith Eger

19. “Not: Why did I live? But: What is mine to do with the life I’ve been given?”

— Edith Eger

20. “We don’t know where we’re going. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Just remember, no one can take away what you’ve put in your mind.”

— Edith Eger

21. “It’s our responsibility to act in service of our authentic selves. Sometimes this means giving up the need to please others, giving up our need for others’ approval.”

— Edith Eger

22. “There is no haven free of limitation, of prejudice.”

— Edith Eger

23. “I like to remind my patients: the opposite of depression is expression.”

— Edith Eger

24. “Freedom is a lifetime practice – a choice we get to make again and again each day. Ultimately, freedom requires hope, which I define in two ways: the awareness that suffering, however terrible, is temporary; and the curiosity to discover what happens next. Hope allows us to live in the present instead of the past, and to unlock the doors of our mental prisons.”

— Edith Eger

25. “Forgiveness isn’t something we do for the person who’s hurt us. It’s something we do for ourselves, so we’re no longer victims or prisoners of the past, so we can stop carrying a burden that harbors nothing but pain.”

— Edith Eger

26. “My mama told me something I will never forget... “We don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but no one can take away from you what you put in your own mind.”

— Edith Eger

27. “In Hungary we say, “Don’t inhale your anger to your breast.” It can be harmful to hold on to feelings and keep them locked inside.”

— Edith Eger

28. “We can choose what the horror teaches us. To become bitter in our grief and fear. Hostile. Paralyzed. Or to hold on to the childlike part of us, the lively and curious part, the part that is innocent.”

— Edith Eger

29. “The truth is, we will have unpleasant experiences in our lives, we will make mistakes, we won’t always get what we want. This is part of being human. The problem – and the foundation of our persistent suffering – is the belief that discomfort, mistakes, disappointment signal something about our worth. The belief that the unpleasant things in our lives are all we deserve.”

— Edith Eger

30. “But as long as you’re avoiding your feelings, you’re denying reality. And if you try to shut something out and say, “I don’t want to think about it,” I guarantee that you’re going to think about it. So invite the feeling in, sit down with it, keep it company. And then decide how long you’re going to hold on to it. Because you’re not a fragile little somebody. It’s good to face every reality. To stop fighting and hiding. To remember that a feeling is just a feeling – it’s not your identity.”

— Edith Eger

31. “But the voice insisted: Find the bigot in you. Find the part in you that is judging, assigning labels, diminishing another’s humanity, making others less than who they are.”

— Edith Eger

32. “Cuando tienes que demostrar algo, no eres libre.”

— Edith Eger

33. “There is no hierarchy of suffering. There’s nothing that makes my pain worse or better than yours.”

— Edith Eger

34. “Simplemente, recuerda: nadie puede quitarte lo que pones en tu mente.”

— Edith Eger

35. “What’s the legacy you want to pass on? We can’t choose what our ancestors did, or what was done to them. But we get to create the recipe that’s handed down. Write a recipe for a life well-lived. Take the good things from your family’s past and add your own ingredients. Give the next generation something delicious and nourishing to build on.”

— Edith Eger

36. “Survivors don’t have time to ask, “Why me?” For survivors, the only relevant question is, “What now?”

— Edith Eger

37. “Life will be good again.’ And you said, ‘If you can survive this, you can survive anything.”

— Edith Eger

38. “Mi primer paso de ese baile fue asumir la responsabilidad de mis sentimientos. Dejar de reprimirlos y evitarlos y dejar de culpar.”

— Edith Eger

39. “When a couple tells me they never fight, I say, “Then you don’t have intimacy, either.” Conflict is human. When we avoid conflict, we’re actually moving closer to tyranny than to peace.”

— Edith Eger

40. “Editke,” my teacher says, “all your ecstasy in life is going to come from the inside.” It will take me years to really understand what he means.”

— Edith Eger

41. “We all have this capacity to choose. When nothing helpful or nourishing is coming from the outside, that is precisely the moment when we have the possibility to discover who we really are. It’s not what happens to us that matters most, it’s what we do with our experiences.”

— Edith Eger

42. “We’re all victims of victims. How far back do you want to go, searching for the source? It’s better to start with yourself.”

— Edith Eger

43. “Time doesn’t heal. It’s what you do with the time. Healing is possible when we choose to take responsibility, when we choose to take risks, and finally, when we choose to release the wound, to let go of the past or the grief.”

— Edith Eger

44. “Magda was competitive and rebellious; I was the peacemaker, hustling between my sisters, soothing their conflicts, hiding my own thoughts. How easily we can make even the warmth and safety of family into a kind of prison. We rely on our old coping mechanisms. We become the person we think we need to be to please others. It takes willpower and choice not to step back into the confining roles we mistakenly believe will keep us safe and protected.”

— Edith Eger

45. “We all have a choice, to pay attention to what have lost or to put attention to what we still have...”

— Edith Eger

46. “When did your childhood end? I often ask my patients.”

— Edith Eger

47. “How can I be useful to you?” How can I support you as you take responsibility for yourself?”

— Edith Eger

48. “It took me many decades to discover that I could come at my life with a different question. Not: Why did I live? But: What is mine to do with the life I’ve been given?”

— Edith Eger

49. “The only place where we can exercise our freedom of choice is in the present.”

— Edith Eger

50. “For me, learning that only I can do what I can do the way I can it meant overthrowing the compulsive achiever in me, who was always chasing more and more pieces of paper in the hops of affirming my worth.”

— Edith Eger