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:
“Shakespeare, with an improved education and in a more enlightened age, might easily have attained the purity and correction of Racine; but nothing leads one to suppose that Racine in a barbarous age would have attained the grandeur, force and nature of Shakespeare.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“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)