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.
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.
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.
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.
Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.
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.
Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority.
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.
Quotes by Alfred Adler
It is the patriotic duty of every man to lie for his country.
It is always easier to fight for one´s principles than to live up to them.
My difficulties belong to me !
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.
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 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.
Man knows more than he understands.
There is no such thing as talent. There is pressure.
War is organized murder and torture against our brothers.
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.
Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy.
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.
The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, with the truth.
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.
To be human means to feel inferior.
War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.
The neurotic is nailed to the cross of his fiction.
The test of one´s behavior pattern; relationship to society, relationship to one´s work, relationship to sex.
We must never neglect the patient´s own use of his symptoms.
The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.
To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman.
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
Man knows much more than he understands.
The only normal people are the one´s you don´t know very well.
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.
The test of one´s behavior pattern is their relationship to society, relationship to work and relationship to sex.
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.
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.
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!
We cannot say that if a child is badly nourished he will become a criminal. We must see what conclusion the child has drawn.
It is easier to fight for one´s principles than to live up to them.
We must interpret a bad temper as a sign of inferiority.
