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:
“Since everything in nature answers to a moral power, if any phenomenon remains brute and dark, it is that the corresponding faculty in the observer is not yet active.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“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)