Alfred Adler Quotes

Overcoming difficulties leads to courage, self-respect, and knowing yourself.

Men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied, men of power are feared; but only men of character are trusted.

You can be healed of depression if every day you begin the first thing in the morning to consider how you will bring a real joy to someone else.

It is very obvious that we are not influenced by "facts" but by our interpretation of the facts.

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

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.

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!

To see with the eyes of another, to hear with the ears of another, to feel with the heart of another. For the time being, this seems to me an admissible definition of what we call social feeling.

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.

What is courage? Courage is the willingness to risk failure...There is only one danger I find in life, and that, indeed, is a real one. You may take too many precautions.

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

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

Every pampered child becomes a hated child.... There is no greater evil than the pampering of children.

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

The feeling of inferiority rules the mental life and can be clearly recognized in the sense of incompleteness and unfulfillment, and in the uninterrupted struggle both of individuals and humanity.

Follow your heart always, and remember to take your head along with you.

It is well known that those who do not trust themselves never trust others.

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

seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.

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

Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority.

Violence as a way of gaining power... is being camouflaged under the guise of tradition, national honor [and] national security.

Everything can always be different!

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

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

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.

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

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

War is organized murder and torture against our brothers.

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

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.

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

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

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

Man knows much more than he understands.

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.

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.

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.

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

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. Hector Berlioz It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

My difficulties belong to me!

To be human means to feel inferior.

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 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.

We cannot say that if a child is badly nourished he will become a criminal. We must see what conclusion the child has drawn.

Every neurotic is partly in the right.