Alfred Adler famous quotes

The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.
-- Alfred Adler

#Drinking #Humor #People

The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.
-- Alfred Adler

#Self Esteem #Life Is Good #May

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.
-- Alfred Adler

#Trust #Work #Commitment

Follow your heart but take your brain with you.
-- Alfred Adler

#Heart #Follow Your Heart #Brain

Men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied, men of power are feared; but only men of character are trusted.
-- Alfred Adler

#Learning #Character #Men

Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.
-- Alfred Adler

#Determination #Giving #Determined

He used to say to his melancholia patients: "You can be cured in fourteen days if you follow this prescription.Try to think every day how you can please someone.
-- Alfred Adler

#Thinking #Trying #Patient

It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
-- Alfred Adler

#Inspirational #Wisdom #Courage

To see with the eyes of another, to hear with the ears of another, to feel with the heart of another. For the time being, this seems to me an admissible definition of what we call social feeling.
-- Alfred Adler

#Heart #Eye #Feelings

Overcoming difficulties leads to courage, self-respect, and knowing yourself.
-- Alfred Adler

#Self #Knowing #Overcoming

We are not determined by our experiences, but are self-determined by the meaning we give to them; and when we take particular experiences as the basis for our future life, we are almost certain to be misguided to some degree. Meanings are not determined by situations. We determine ourselves by the meanings we ascribe to situations.
-- Alfred Adler

#Self #Giving #Degrees

Every therapeutic cure, and still more, any awkward attempt to show the patient the truth, tears him from the cradle of his freedom from responsibility and must therefore reckon with the most vehement resistance.
-- Alfred Adler

#Responsibility #Awkward #Tears

No experience is a cause of success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences, so-called trauma - but we make out of them just what suits our purposes.
-- Alfred Adler

#Success #Congratulations #Failure

You can be healed of depression if every day you begin the first thing in the morning to consider how you will bring a real joy to someone else.
-- Alfred Adler

#Morning #Real #Broken

An educator's most important task, one might say his holy duty, is to see to it that no child is discouraged at school, and that a child who enters school already discouraged regains his self-confidence through his school and his teacher. This goes hand in hand with the vocation of the educator, for education is possible only with children who look hopefully and joyfully upon the future.
-- Alfred Adler

#Teacher #Children #School

It is very obvious that we are not influenced by "facts" but by our interpretation of the facts.
-- Alfred Adler

#Facts #Interpretation #Obvious

What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning - and some of them many times over - what do you find? That you can swim? Well - life is just the same as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live!
-- Alfred Adler

#Mistake #Swim #Way

All failures - neurotics, psychotics, criminals, drunkards, problem children, suicides, perverts, and prostitutes - are failures because they are lacking in social interest
-- Alfred Adler

#Suicide #Children #Failure

A simple rule in dealing with those who are hard to get along with is to remember that this person is striving to assert his superiority; and you must deal with him from that point of view.
-- Alfred Adler

#Simple #Views #People

The educator must believe in the potential power of his pupil, and he must employ all his art in seeking to bring his pupil to experience this power.
-- Alfred Adler

#Education #Art #Believe

We must interpret a bad temper as a sign of inferiority.
-- Alfred Adler

#Inferiority #Temper #Bad Temper

Man knows much more than he understands.
-- Alfred Adler

#Men #Understanding

The test of one's behavior pattern is their relationship to society, relationship to work and relationship to sex.
-- Alfred Adler

#Relationship #Sex #Patterns

There is no such thing as talent. There is pressure.
-- Alfred Adler

#Pressure #Talent

Play is a child's work and this is not a trivial pursuit.
-- Alfred Adler

#Children #Play #Pursuit

seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.
-- Alfred Adler

#Heart #Eye #Empathy

There is a courage of happiness as well as a courage of sorrow.
-- Alfred Adler

#Sorrow #Wells

The only worthwhile achievements of man are those which are socially useful.
-- Alfred Adler

#Men #Achievement #Worthwhile

It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is fro+m among such individuals that all human failures spring.
-- Alfred Adler

#Spring #Men #Fellow Man

To be human means to feel inferior.
-- Alfred Adler

#Mean #Humanity #Feels

A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.
-- Alfred Adler

#Lying #Dangerous

The neurotic is nailed to the cross of his fiction.
-- Alfred Adler

#Fiction #Medical #Crosses

Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority.
-- Alfred Adler

#Reality #Expression #Feelings

To be a human being means to possess a feeling of inferiority which constantly presses towards its own conquest. The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge for conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation.
-- Alfred Adler

#Powerful #Mean #Emotional

We must never neglect the patient's own use of his symptoms.
-- Alfred Adler

#Use #Patient #Neglect

Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy.
-- Alfred Adler

#Peace #War #Knowing

To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman.
-- Alfred Adler

#Peace #War #Ubuntu

God who is eternally complete, who directs the stars, who is the master of fates, who elevates man from his lowliness to Himself, who speaks from the cosmos to every single human soul, is the most brilliant manifestation of the goal of perfection.
-- Alfred Adler

#God #Stars #Fate

My psychology belongs to everyone.
-- Alfred Adler

#Psychology

The science of the mind can only have for its proper goal the understanding of human nature by every human being, and through its use, brings peace to every human soul.
-- Alfred Adler

#Goal #Understanding #Soul

It is the patriotic duty of every man to lie for his country.
-- Alfred Adler

#Country #Lying #Patriotic

There is no thing as a man who does not create mathematics and yet is a fine mathematics teacher. Textbooks, course material-these do not approach in importance the communication of what mathematics is really about, of where it is going, and of where it currently stands with respect to the specific branch of it being taught. What really matters is the communication of the spirit of mathematics. It is a spirit that is active rather than contemplative-a spirit of disciplined search for adventures of the intellect. Only as adventurer can really tell of adventures.
-- Alfred Adler

#Teacher #Communication #Adventure

The widespread belief that Yuppies as a class would perish from Brie-cheese poisoning turned out to be over-optimistic.
-- Alfred Adler

#Optimistic #Class #Yuppies

Death is really a great blessing for humanity, without it there could be no real progress. People who lived for ever would not only hamper and discourage the young, but they would themselves lack sufficient stimulus to be creative.
-- Alfred Adler

#Real #Creativity #Blessing

Everything can always be different!
-- Alfred Adler

#Different

We cannot say that if a child is badly nourished he will become a criminal. We must see what conclusion the child has drawn.
-- Alfred Adler

#Children #Criminals #Conclusion

I am grateful for the idea that has used me.
-- Alfred Adler

#Grateful #Ideas #Used

The goal of the human soul is conquest, perfection, security, superiority.
-- Alfred Adler

#Goal #Perfection #Soul

In this case, the neurotic resembles a human being who looks up to God, commends himself to His ways, and then religiously awaits how the Lord will guide him; he is nailed to the cross of his fiction.
-- Alfred Adler

#Looks #Fiction #Way

If I didn't have this affliction, I would be the first. As a rule the if-clause contains an unfulfillable condition, or the patient's own arrangement, which only he can change.
-- Alfred Adler

#Would Be #Affliction #Firsts

The self-bound individual always forgets that his self would be safeguarded better and automatically the more he prepares himself for the welfare of mankind, and that in this respect no limits are set for him.
-- Alfred Adler

#Self #Would Be #Limits

To injure another person through atonement is one of the most subtle devices of the neurotic, as when, for example, he indulges in self-accusations.
-- Alfred Adler

#Self #Example #Atonement

It is easy to believe that life is long and one's gifts are vast -- easy at the beginning, that is. But the limits of life grow more evident; it becomes clear that great work can be done rarely, if at all.
-- Alfred Adler

#Believe #Long #Done

Life is just the same as learning to swim. Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live!
-- Alfred Adler

#Mistake #Persistence #Swim

If you wish to educate a child who has gone wrong, then you must, above all, keep your attention fixed on the intersection of two charmed circles.
-- Alfred Adler

#Children #Circles #Two

It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.
-- Alfred Adler

#Spring #Individual #Humans

There is only one reason for an individual to side-step to the useless side : the fear of a defeat on the useful side.
-- Alfred Adler

#Useless #Sides #Steps

We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a "getaway." We cannot love and be limited.
-- Alfred Adler

#Inspirational Love #Real #Taken

It is one of the triumphs of human wit ... to conquer by humility and submissiveness ... to make oneself small in order to appear great ... such ... are often the expedients of the neurotic.
-- Alfred Adler

#Humility #Order #Triumph

The mathematical life of a mathematician is short. Work rarely improves after the age of twenty-five or thirty. If little has been accomplished by then, little will ever be accomplished.
-- Alfred Adler

#Hard Work #Age #Twenties

My difficulties belong to me!
-- Alfred Adler

#Difficulty

Violence as a way of gaining power... is being camouflaged under the guise of tradition, national honor [and] national security...
-- Alfred Adler

#Honor #Politics #Way

Distorted history boasts of bellicose glory... and seduces the souls of boys to seek mystical bliss in bloodshed and in battles.
-- Alfred Adler

#Boys #Soul #Battle

War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.
-- Alfred Adler

#Peace #War #Mean

Every individual acts and suffers in accordance with his peculiar teleology, which has all the inevitability of fate, so long as he does not understand it.
-- Alfred Adler

#Fate #Long #Suffering

There is a law that man should love his neighbor as himself. In a few hundred years it should be as natural to mankind as breathing or the upright gait; but if he does not learn it he must perish.
-- Alfred Adler

#Love #Men #Years

In the company of friends, writers can discuss their books, economists the state of the economy, lawyers their latest cases, and businessmen their latest acquisitions, but mathematicians cannot discuss their mathematics at all. And the more profound their work, the less understandable it is.
-- Alfred Adler

#Book #Profound #Acquisition

Mathematics is pure language - the language of science. It is unique among languages in its ability to provide precise expression for every thought or concept that can be formulated in its terms.
-- Alfred Adler

#Unique #Expression #Language

The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, with the truth.
-- Alfred Adler

#Truth #Lying #Reality

War is organized murder and torture against our brothers.
-- Alfred Adler

#Peace #Brother #War

The feeling of inferiority rules the mental life and can be clearly recognized in the sense of incompleteness and unfulfillment, and in the uninterrupted struggle both of individuals and humanity.
-- Alfred Adler

#Struggle #Feelings #Humanity

In the investigation of a neurotic style of life, we must always suspect an opponent, and note who suffers most because of the patient's condition. Usually this is a member of the family.
-- Alfred Adler

#Style #Suffering #Opponents

It is one of the most effective attitudes of the neurotic to measure thumbs down, so to speak, a real person by an ideal, since in doing so he can depreciate him as much as he wishes.
-- Alfred Adler

#Attitude #Real #Judging

The style of life is a unity because it has grown out of the difficulties of early life and out of the striving for a goal.
-- Alfred Adler

#Goal #Unity #Style

Each generation has its few great mathematicians, and mathematics would not even notice the absence of the others. They are useful as teachers, and their research harms no one, but it is of no importance at all. A mathematician is great or he is nothing.
-- Alfred Adler

#Teacher #Generations #Research

More important than innate disposition, objective experience, and environment is the subjective evaluation of these. Furthermore, this evaluation stands in a certain, often strange, relation to reality.
-- Alfred Adler

#Reality #Objectivity #Important

Nobody adopts antisocial behaviour unless they fear that they will fail if they remain on the social side of life.
-- Alfred Adler

#Behaviour #Sides #Failing

The Adlerians, in the name of "individual psychology," take the side of society against the individual. ... Adler's later thought succumbs to the worst of his earlier banalization. It is conventional, practical, and moralistic. "Our science ... is based on common sense." Common sense, the half-truths of a deceitful society, is honored as the honest truths of a frank world.
-- Alfred Adler

#Names #Common Sense #Psychology

The striving for significance, this sense of yearning, always points out to us that all psychological phenomena contain a movement that starts from a feeling of inferiority and reach upward. The theory of Individual Psychology of psychological compensation states that the stronger the feeling of inferiority, the higher the goal for personal power.
-- Alfred Adler

#Goal #Feelings #Psychology