Granville Stanley Hall (February 1, 1846 – April 24, 1924) was a pioneering American psychologist and educator who earned the first doctorate in psychology awarded in the United States of America at Harvard College in the nineteenth century. His interests focused on human life span development and evolutionary theory.

G. Stanley Hall Quotes

01. “Adolescence is when the very worst and best impulses in the human soul struggle against each other for possession.”
― G. Stanley Hall

02. “People don’t quit playing because they grow old. They grow old because they quit playing.”
― G. Stanley Hall

03. “Oneness with Nature is the glory of childhood; oneness with childhood is the glory of the Teacher.”
― G. Stanley Hall

04. “Adolescence is a new birth, for the higher and more completely human traits are now born.” ~”
― G. Stanley Hall

05. “Normal children often pass through stages of passionate cruelty, laziness, lying and thievery.”
― G. Stanley Hall

06. “Man is largely a creature of habit, and many of his activities are more or less automatic reflexes from the stimuli of his environment.”
― G. Stanley Hall

07. “Constant muscular activity was natural for the child, and, therefore, the immense effort of the drillmaster teachers to make children sit still was harmful and useless.”
― G. Stanley Hall

08. “Adolescence as the time when an individual ‘recapitulates’ the savage stage of the race’s past.”
― G. Stanley Hall

09. “.. every step of the upward way is strewn with wreckage of body, mind, and morals.”
― G. Stanley Hall

10. “The years from about eight to twelve constitute a unique period of human life.”
― G. Stanley Hall

11. “Every theory of love, from Plato down teaches that each individual loves in the other sex what he lacks in himself.”
― G. Stanley Hall

12. “Of all work-schools, a good farm is probably the best for motor developments.”
― G. Stanley Hall

13. “Modern man was not meant to do his best work before forty but is by nature, and is becoming more so, an afternoon and evening worker.”
― G. Stanley Hall

14. “Puberty for a girl is like floating down a broadening river into an open sea.”
― G. Stanley Hall

15. “The man of the future may, and even must, do things impossible in the past and acquire new motor variations not given by heredity.”
― G. Stanley Hall

16. “Oneness with Nature is the glory of childhood; oneness with childhood is the glory of the Teacher.”
― G. Stanley Hall

17. “Man is largely a creature of habit, and many of his activities are more or less automatic reflexes from the stimuli of his environment.”
― G. Stanley Hall

18. “Being an only child is a disease in itself.”
― G. Stanley Hall

19. “The years from about eight to twelve constitute a unique period of human life.”
― G. Stanley Hall

20. “This splendid subject [mathematics], queen of all exact sciences, and the ideal and norm of all careful thinking.”
― G. Stanley Hall

21. “Muscles are in a most intimate and peculiar sense the organs of the will.”
― G. Stanley Hall

22. “The child is father to the man.”
― G. Stanley Hall

23. “The battle between instinct and reason is never-ending.”
― G. Stanley Hall

23. “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
― G. Stanley Hall

24. “Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.”
― G. Stanley Hall

25. “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.”
― G. Stanley Hall

26. “The great thing to remember is that though our time is dark our future is luminous.”
― G. Stanley Hall

27. “Personality is a product of our genes and our environment, but also of our own willpower.”
― G. Stanley Hall

28. “The mind is like an iceberg, with a small part above the surface and a vast part hidden beneath.”
― G. Stanley Hall

29. “Life is a series of choices, and our choices define who we are.”
― G. Stanley Hall

30. “Success is not the key to happiness, happiness is the key to success.”
― G. Stanley Hall

31. “We must embrace uncertainty and embrace the unknown, for that is where true growth lies.”
― G. Stanley Hall

32. “The greatest achievement is self-achievement, for in mastering ourselves, we master the world around us.”
― G. Stanley Hall

33. “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
― G. Stanley Hall

34. “The measure of a man’s character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.”
― G. Stanley Hall

35. “Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”
― G. Stanley Hall

36. “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― G. Stanley Hall

37. “The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”
― G. Stanley Hall

38. “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
― G. Stanley Hall

39.”The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.”
― G. Stanley Hall

40. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
― G. Stanley Hall

41. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
― G. Stanley Hall

42. “Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.”
― G. Stanley Hall

43. “The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be ignited.”
― G. Stanley Hall

44. “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.”
― G. Stanley Hall