Nature versus nurture is a popular phrase used to describe debates over the relative degrees to which one's genetic makeup (nature) and one's life experiences (nurture) influence one's traits or attributes.
Read more about this topic: Nature (innate)
Famous quotes containing the words nature and/or nurture:
“A happy marriage perhaps represents the ideal of human relationship—a setting in which each partner, while acknowledging the need of the other, feels free to be what he or she by nature is: a relationship in which instinct as well as intellect can find expression; in which giving and taking are equal; in which each accepts the other, and I confronts Thou.”
—Anthony Storr (b. 1920)
“Preschool children are more sophisticated than toddlers.... Your goal as a parent is to nurture the child’s desire to be a self-starter and help him begin to adopt some of your attitudes and values, but without humiliating the child or suppressing his newfound assertiveness”
—Lawrence Balter (20th century)