Alfred Adler's Quotes

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

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

It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

My difficulties belong to me!

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge to conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation.

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.

Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority.

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.

We must interpret a bad temper as a sign of inferiority.

A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt dangerous.

There is no such thing as talent. There is pressure.

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.