Adler Quotes

It is not only by the questions we have answered that progress may be measured, but also by those we are still asking.

Happy children should not try to be artists. You have to be born with a broken heart and a sense of loneliness inside. I never had a happy moment as a child myself.

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

It's not enough to have talent. You have to have a talent for your talent.

The only excuse for not coming to a class or a performance is death.

True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.

A good book can teach you about the world and about yourself. You learn more than how to read better; you also learn more about life. You become wiser.

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.

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

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 agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent.

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

The ultimate end of education is happiness or a good human life, a life enriched by the possession of every kind of good, by the enjoyment of every type of satisfaction.

Vasectomy means never having to say you're sorry.

One way we can enliven the imagination is to push it toward the illogical. We're not scientists. We don't always have to make the logical, reasonable leap.

Acting can be the healthiest profession in the world, because it allows you to do things you can't do in real life. It allows you to understand more than just what life provides you.

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

War is organized murder and torture against our brothers.

Unless we love and are loved, each of us is alone, each of us is deeply lonely.

Conjugal love, or the friendship of spouses, persists after sexual desires have weakened, withered, and disappeared.

You act with your soul. That's why you all want to be actors, because your souls are not used up by life.

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

The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.

Emotions aren't doable. Actions are doable, and if you do them correctly, they prompt the feelings.

You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think.

So many people shy away from using color in their homes for fear of getting it wrong...But ignorance and fear are no reason to live in a bland box.

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

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.

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.

In life, as on the stage, it's not who I am but what I do that's the measure of my worth and the secret of my success. All the rest is showiness, arrogance and conceit.

To grow: that is your deepest and truest need when you say, 'I want to be an actor.'

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

I look in the mirror and see a few scars, but I like myself.

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

Don’t use your conscious past. Use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. I don’t want you to be stuck with your own life. It’s too little.

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

Man knows much more than he understands.

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.

Life is boring. The weather is boring. Actors must not be boring.

Drumming is not worrying about what you can't do. It's about having fun with what you can do.

The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place.

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.

Your home should reflect who you are, so pick a palette that's close to your heart and run with it.

The truly great books are the few books that are over everybody's head all of the time.

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.

Growth as an actor and as a human being are synonymous.

What person, confined in a small room with nothing but a tea-cosy, will not eventually put the tea-cosy on their head?

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.

Education is the sum total of one's experience, and the purpose of higher education is to widen our experiences beyond the circumscribed existence or our own daily lives.

My difficulties belong to me!