Milton Erickson Quotes

You can teach a child the importance of pain by your behavior. You can also teach as child the importance of no pain by your behavior. ~ Milton H. Erickson

Milton Erickson was a master at using experiential techniques to elicit strengths that were previously dormant. Mills and Crowley have masterfully captured essential elements of Erickson's work and applied it to therapy with children. Easy to read, meticulously referenced, and filled with inspiring case studies, Therapeutic Metaphors for Children and the Child Within has now been updated with important new findings, and it's essential reading for clinicians who work with children as well as for those who want to improve their use of therapeutic metaphor. ~ Jeffrey K. Zeig

Soulmates aren't the ones who make you happiest, no. They're instead the ones who make you feel the most. Burning edges and scars and stars. Old pangs, captivation and beauty. Strain and shadows and worry and yearning. Sweetness and madness and dreamlike surrender. They hurl you into the abyss. They taste like hope. ~ Victoria Erickson

Execute their airy purposes. ~ John Milton

I can scarce bring myself to believe, that I am admitted to a familiar correspondence, and all the license of friendship, with a man who writes blank verse like Milton. ~ Charles Lamb

The majority does rule. But it is a rather special kind of majority. It consists of a coalition of special interest minorities. The way to get elected to Congress is to collect groups of, say, 2 or 3 percent of your constituents, each of which is strongly interested in one special issue that hardly concerns the rest of your constituents. Each group will be willing to vote for you if you promise to back its issue regardless of what you do about other issues. Put together enough such groups and you will have a 51 percent majority. That is the kind of logrolling majority that rules the country. ~ Milton Friedman

All seemed well pleased, all seemed, but were not all. ~ John Milton

Come knit hands, and beat the ground in a light fantastic round ~ John Milton

Solitude isn't loneliness. Solitude is when the entire serene universe seems to surround and hold you quietly. ~ Victoria Erickson

Keynes was a great economist. In every discipline, progress comes from people who make hypotheses, most of which turn out to be wrong, but all of which ultimately point to the right answer. Now Keynes, in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,set forth a hypothesis which was a beautiful one, and it really altered the shape of economics. But it turned out that it was a wrong hypothesis. That doesn't mean that he wasn't a great man! ~ Milton Friedman

Servant of God, well done! well hast thou fought
The better fight, who single hast maintain'd
Against revolted multitudes the cause of truth. ~ John Milton

In a letter, once, he drew me a picture, or allegorical diagram, imitated from the well-known frontispiece of Hobbes's Leviathan, which showed a Leviathan of human values. In the head there stood a figure labeled SAINT. In the heart, a figure labeled HERO. Twittering round the huge figure there was an insect-like object dressed as a man of fashion of the seventeenth century and labeled GENTLEMAN; from its mouth there issued a balloon in which was written in tiny letters: 'and where do I come in?'. Mirabel, he went on to say, was no part of the Everlasting Gospel, a phrase of Blake's that he had his own meaning for. Perhaps the hunger for magnitude that made him admire Gilgamesh and the Edda, and made Spenser and Milton his favourites, disabled him from an appreciation, which I could not deny, for a world of elegant cuckoldry and cynic wit, so seemingly heartless, a trifler's scum of humanity that sought to be taken for its cream. ~ Jocelyn Gibb

Be strong, live happy and love, but first of all
Him whom to love is to obey, and keep
His great command! ~ John Milton

The Queen coined new money specifically for the Company {East India}. Minted at the Tower of London and bearing her arms on one side and a portcullis on the other, it soon became know as the portcullis money. She also granted the merchants a new flag which, with its blue field and background of thirteen red and white stripes, prefigured the one adopted by the Thirteen Colonies of America some 175 years later. ~ Giles Milton

Disneyland remains the central attraction of Southern California, but the graveyard remains our reality. ~ Charles Bukowski

The future of private enterprise capitalism is also the future of a free society. There is no possibility of having a politically free society unless the major part of its economic resources are operated under a capitalistic private enterprise system. ~ Milton Friedman

The major basis for my opposition to marijuana prohibition has not been how badly it's worked, the fact that it's produced much more harm than good - it has been primarily a moral reason: I don't think the state has any more right to tell me what to put into my mouth than it has to tell me what can come out of my mouth. ~ Milton Friedman

I used to be in school, like a good boy. Medieval Literature. Von Eschenbach, Chaucer, Milton... Yes, sir, no, sir. Then I had that... Crisis. You know it? Wake up one morning and everything's all wrong? Wake up one morning and it occurs to you the milk's spoiled and the bread is getting moldy. Wake up and it just hits you. Someday you're gonna die. Maybe like that girl last night died. Face down in an alley with a caved in head. Such a terrible thing and what for? Why life? Why This life? Why This soap? Why these hands? What's it all mean? Deep down you fear nothing. But you still hope something. Either way, you're not really sure. That's my crisis. I don't wanna die. But if I'm gonna die, first I'm gonna live. I'm gonna peel life like fruit, and use it up. I'm gonna light up an' burn. I'll burn and burn until I'm snuffed out. Then I'll just fade away. But until then I'm gonna live! I'm ready. I'm gonna do it. Come what may, one hundred percent. ~ Paul Pope

Freely we serve
Because we freely love, as in our will
To love or not; in this we stand or fall. ~ John Milton

The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the "rule of the game" and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on. ~ Milton Friedman

Like me wanting to get nailed made me less of a man than him? That was bullshit. He seemed kind of sexist. I bet he was a fucking Republican. ~ Megan Erickson

A predominantly voluntary exchange economy, on the other hand, has within it the potential to promote both prosperity and human freedom. It may not achieve its potential in either respect, but we know of no society that has ever achieved prosperity and freedom unless voluntary exchange has been it's dominate principle of organization. ~ Milton Freidman

I wanted to tell him a story, but I didn't. It's a story about a Jew riding in a streetcar, in Germany during the Third Reich, reading Goebbels' paper, the Volkische Beobachter. A non-Jewish acquaintance sits down next to him and says, "Why do you read the Beobachter?" "Look," says the Jew, "I work in a factory all day. When I get home, my wife nags me, the children are sick, and there's no money for food. What should I do on my way home, read the Jewish newspaper? Pogrom in Romania' 'Jews Murdered in Poland.' 'New Laws against Jews.' No, sir, a half-hour a day, on the streetcar, I read the Beobachter. 'Jews the World Capitalists,' 'Jews Control Russia,' 'Jews Rule in England.' That's me they're talking about. A half-hour a day I'm somebody. Leave me alone, friend. ~ Milton Sanford Mayer

I love getting older. My understanding deepens. I can see what connects, I can weave stories of experience and apply them. I can integrate the lessons. Things simply become more and more fascinating. Beauty reveals itself in thousands of forms. ~ Victoria Erickson

For Christmas the just came out with a battery-operated battery. But the batteries aren't included. ~ Milton Berle

Chaos umpire sits And by decision more embroils the fray by which he reigns: next him high arbiter Chance governs all. ~ John Milton

Eternal life is the most important thing in all the world for which you and I should work and hope someday to attain ... the person who attains eternal life is exceedingly rich. Seek not for riches but for wisdom ... he that hath eternal life is rich. Eternal life is the greatest of all of the gifts of God. ~ Milton R. Hunter

God is thy law, thou mine. ~ John Milton

Yours be the advantage all, mine the revenge ~ John Milton

Had drugs been decriminalized, crack would never have been invented and there would today be fewer addicts ... The ghettos would not be drug-and-crime-infested no-man's lands ... Colombia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of it. ~ Milton Friedman

We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork. ~ Milton Friedman

In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs. ~ John Milton

The argument for the free market is a complicated and sophisticated one and depends on demonstration of secondary effects. I have confidence market efficiency will win out. ~ Milton Friedman

So with Dr. Johnson and John Stuart Mill, and Spencer, and William Shakespeare, and Chaucer, and Milton, and John Bunyan, and others of that royal company of bards, thanks to my father and Mr. Gruffydd, I was acquainted, more than plenty of other boys, and thus had a lasting benefit in school. ~ Richard Llewellyn

Pleas'd me, long choosing and beginning late. ~ John Milton

Who would not, finding way, break loose from hell, ... And boldly venture to whatever place Farthest from pain? ~ John Milton

But to create
Is greater than created to destroy. ~ John Milton

Few areas which are not publicly owned can boast as many footpaths as the Cuckmere Valley. For a short walk, a footbridge across the river leads back to the little hamlet of Milton Street, where another classic local pub, the Sussex Ox, provides an admirable lunch. ~ David Hewson