Alfred Adler Quotes
Bio: Alfred Adler (February 7, 1870 – May 28, 1937) was a doctor and psychologsit who published more than 300 books and articles. Alfred Adler’s most noted publications were The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology, Understanding Human Nature and What Life Could Mean to You. Alfred Adler was founder of the school of individual psychology.
Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.
Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.
Quotes by Alfred Adler
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!
The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, with the truth.
My difficulties belong to me !
War is organized murder and torture against our brothers.
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 emotiona
The only normal people are the one´s you don´t know very well.
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.
There is no such thing as talent. There is pressure.
It is always easier to fight for one´s principles than to live up to them.
To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman.
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.
There is a Law that man should love his neighbor as himself. In a few years it should be as natural to mankind as breathing or the upright gait; but if he does not learn it he must perish.
The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.
It is the patriotic duty of every man to lie for his country.
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 neurotic is nailed to the cross of his fiction.
We cannot say that if a child is badly nourished he will become a criminal. We must see what conclusion the child has drawn.
The test of one´s behavior pattern is their relationship to society, relationship to work and relationship to sex.
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.
It is easier to fight for our principles than it is to live up to them.
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.
We must interpret a bad temper as a sign of inferiority.
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.
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 test of one´s behavior pattern; relationship to society, relationship to one´s work, relationship to sex.
Man knows more than he understands.
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.
War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.
Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.
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.
Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy.
Man knows much more than he understands.
