Alfred Adler Quotes (67 Quotes)

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

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

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.

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

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.

Man knows much more than he understands.

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.

Tears and complaints - the means which I have called water power - can be an extremely useful weapon for disturbing cooperation and reducing other to a condition of slavery.

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.

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.

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

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.

My difficulties belong to me!

We can comprehend every single life phenomenon, as if the past, the present, and the future together with a superordinate, guiding idea were present in it in traces.

I have taken forty years to make my psychology simple. I might say all neurosis is vanity - but this also might not be understood.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

We must interpret a bad temper as a sign 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.

To be human means to feel inferior.

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

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 from among such individuals that all human failures spring.

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

There is always this element of concealed accusation in neurosis, the patient feeling as though he were deprived of his right-that is, of the center of attention - and wanting to fix the responsibility and blame upon someone.

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.

The human mind shows an urge to capture into fixed forms through unreal assumptions, that is, fictions, that which is chaotic, always in flux, and incomprehensible. Serving this urge, the child quite generally uses a scheme in order to act and to fin

The human soul, as a part of the movement of life, is endowed with the ability to participate in the uplift, elevation, perfection, and completion.

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

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.

We live upon the contributions of our ancestors. Nature is a good scavenger. She soon gets rid of her rubbish.

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

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.

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

In God's nature, religious mankind perceives the way to height. In His call it hears again the innate voice of life which must have its direction towards the goal of perfection, towards overcoming the feeling of lowliness and transistorizes of the ex

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.

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

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

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

Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority.

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.

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

The test of one's behavior pattern relationship to society, relationship to one's work, relationship to sex.

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.

It is easier to fight for our principles than it is to live up to them.