Quotes from Michael Gurian

Boys need to learn the value of spiritual solitude. For the soul to grow, it needs those moments of no-stimulation, of wakeful peace. Because we adults don't usually practice enough solitude—because we are always 'doing' things—we often neglect to teach our boys to find solitude

A great deal of intellectual intelligence depends on emotional intelligence.

Adolescent youths cry out for us to help them contextualize their life experiences.

Boys often need us to give them more time than girls need, and they often need us to connect their feelings to objects in the outside world.

Boys must find ways to compete and see themselves as performing well. If they do not, if society does not provide them with these opportunities, they'll compete against society itself, abusing their community and themselves.

In reality, human nature hardwires gender into our brains in three biological stages. The first stage has been clarified by genetics research, the second by endocrinological research, and the third by psychosocial research .7

We are, in large part, a culture that expects its boys to initiate themselves into manhood. But holistic or even minimal initiation into manhood through relatively unguided self-experimentation is rare. Boys cannot become whole men without men and women making them into men.

As our lives speed up more and more, so do our children's. We forget and thus they forget that there is nothing more important than the present moment. We forget and thus they forget to relax, to find spiritual solitude, to let go of the past, to quiet ambition, to fully enjoy the eating of a strawberry, the scent of a rose, the touch of a hand on a cheek...

The three times rule is: let's direct and correct the child each time he is too impulsive, but don't punish him until the third time. The exception to this rule is, of course, if he is being violent or dangerous. When people punish boys for their first impulse rather than guiding them into a three times format, they are generally penalizing males unfairly for utilizing MEI to learn who to be and who to become.

Blame is like ice-it freezes an issue without changing it.

men's brains naturally go into a rest state more than women's brains do. Women's brains don't rest or deactivate the way men's brains do.

What is intuitive to most parents was clarified by biological research: families matter. In the last two decades, scientists in the area of attachment research have shown just how dependent children are on the parents and close extended family for life success.

The thing most of them had in common was that a woman could argue she felt uncomfortable as a potential victim of masculinity. Yet feeling uncomfortable is not dangerous. "Feeling discomfort" is not hostile but in most cases, it is a positive challenge to the psyche, a method of self-appraisal, an invitation to civil argument, and a part of the maturation process of human beings.

few things subvert true gender equality in the workplace more than a micro-aggressions mentality that condemns normal male behavior and "rescues" a particular young woman even when she hasn't been harmed. Resentment follows among most males and even many females, and productivity declines.

For a man, graceful love is immensely difficult, and nearly impossible, if his relationship with his mother is not fully understood.

we must absolutely deepen our understanding of male development—and alter the limited paradigms we use—right away. To keep saying that "masculinity" causes violence is to specifically not study epidemiological and toxicological causation for violence, and thus, perpetuate a cycle of violence and distress into the next generation.

we must come to realize that once we have kids, individualism is impractical and self-defeating.