Top 40 Eric Berne Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Love is nature’s psychotherapy.”

— Eric Berne

2. “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

3. “Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future.”

— Eric Berne

4. “We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs.”

— Eric Berne

5. “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

6. “Everyone carries his parents around inside of him.”

— Eric Berne

7. “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

8. “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

9. “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.”

— Eric Berne

10. “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

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

— Eric Berne

12. “Games are a compromise between intimacy and keeping intimacy away.”

— Eric Berne

13. “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.”

— Eric Berne

14. “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

15. “For certain fortunate people there is something which transcends all classifications of behaviour, and that is awareness; something which rises above the programming of the past, and that is spontaneity; and something that is more rewarding than games, and that is intimacy.”

— Eric Berne

16. “There is no hope for the human race, but there is hope for individual members of it.”

— Eric Berne

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

— Eric Berne

18. “No man is a hero to his wife’s psychiatrist.”

— Eric Berne

19. “Parents, deliberately or unaware, teach their children from birth how to behave, drink, feel and perceive. Liberation from these influences is no easy matter.”

— Eric Berne

20. “It is better to be a slave to your beloved woman than a free man to the unloved one.”

— Eric Berne

21. “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

22. “Spontaneity means option, the freedom to choose and express one’s feelings from the assortment available.”

— Eric Berne

23. “The best way to tell a winner from a loser is this: A winner is a person who knows what he’ll do next if he loses, but doesn’t talk about it; a loser is one who doesn’t know what he’ll do if he loses, but talks about what he’ll do if he wins.”

— Eric Berne

24. “If you take away the big words and the solemn face, there is still plenty left, so there is no need to be scared.”

— Eric Berne

25. “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.”

— Eric Berne

26. “The essential and similar feature of both procedures and rituals is that they are stereotyped. Once the first transaction has been initiated, the whole series is predictable and follows a predetermined course to a foreordained conclusion unless special conditions arise.”

— Eric Berne

27. “A game is played from a position, but a position or its corresponding attitude is not a game.”

— Eric Berne

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

— Eric Berne

29. “Salesman: ‘This one is better, but you can’t afford it.’ Housewife: ‘That’s the one I’ll take.”

— Eric Berne

30. “Despair is a concern of the Adult, while in depression it is the Child who has the executive power. Hopefulness, enthusiasm or a lively interest in one’s surroundings is the opposite of depression; laughter is the opposite of despair.”

— Eric Berne

31. “Individuals who are not comfortable or adept with rituals sometimes evade them by substituting procedures. They can be found, for example, among people who like to help the hostess with preparing or serving food and drink at parties.”

— Eric Berne

32. “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

33. “Cowboy: ‘Come and see the barn.’ Visitor: ‘I’ve loved barns ever since I was a little girl.”

— Eric Berne

34. “To hurry is to neglect that environment and to be conscious only of something that is still out of sight down the road, or of mere obstacles, or solely of oneself.”

— Eric Berne

35. “At the end of the party, each person will have selected certain players he would like to see more of, while others he will discard, regardless of how skillfully or pleasantly they each engaged in the pastime. The ones he selects are those who seem the most likely candidates for more complex relationships – that is, games. This sorting system, however well rationalized, is actually largely unconscious and intuitive.”

— Eric Berne

36. “It is not difficult to deduce from an individual’s position the kind of childhood he must have had. Unless something or somebody intervenes, he spends the rest of his life stabilizing his position and dealing with situations that threaten it: by avoiding them, warding off certain elements or manipulating them provocatively so that they are transformed from threats into justifications.”

— Eric Berne

37. “A game looks like a set of operations, but after the payoff it becomes apparent that these operations were really maneuvers; not honest requests but moves in the game.”

— Eric Berne

38. “Raising” children is primarily a matter of teaching them what games to play. Different cultures and different social classes favor different types of games, and various tribes and families favor different variations of these. That is the cultural significance of games.”

— Eric Berne

39. “But wether I am faking on a player piano, or striking the chords with the power of my own mind and hands, the song of my life is equally suspenseful and full of surprises as it rolls off the pulsating sounding board of destiny – a barcarole that either way will leave, I hope, happy echoes behind.”

— Eric Berne

40. “Wasteful moves are eliminated, and more and more purpose is condensed into each move. “Beautiful friendships” are often based on the fact that the players complement each other with great economy and satisfaction, so that there is a maximum yield with a minimum effort from the games they play with each other.”

— Eric Berne

41. “A few people, however, can still see and hear in the old way. But most of the members of the human race have lost the capacity to he painters, poets or musicians, and are not left the option of seeing and hearing directly even if they can afford to; they must get it secondhand. The recovery of this ability is called here “awareness.”

— Eric Berne

42. “Father has good reasons on his side, since few people can afford to go through life listening to the birds sing, and the sooner the little boy starts his “education” the better.”

— Eric Berne