Alfred Adler > Quotes

“Follow your heart but take your brain with you.”
― Alfred Adler

“It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.”
― Alfred Adler

“Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.”
― Alfred Adler

“The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.”
― Alfred Adler

“The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.”
― Alfred Adler

“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.”
― Alfred Adler, What Life Should Mean To You Hardcover

“A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.”
― Alfred Adler

“seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.”
― Alfred Adler

“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 emotional agitation.”
― Alfred Adler

“This quote begins here. 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. This quote ends here.”
― Alfred Adler, Social Interest: Adler's Key to the Meaning of Life

“Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.”
― Alfred Adler

“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.”
― Alfred Adler

“we limit ourselves to normal cases of mutual influence, we find that those people are most capable of being influenced who are most amenable to reason and logic, those whose social feeling has been least distorted. On the contrary, those who thirst for superiority and desire domination are very difficult to influence. Observation teaches us this fact every day.”
― Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature

“It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.”
― Alfred Adler

“a woman who contributes to the life of mankind by the occupation of motherhood is taking as high a place in the division of human labor as anyone else could take. If she is interested in the lives of her children and is paving the way for them to become fellow men, if she is spreading their interests and training them to cooperate, her work is so valuable that it can never be rightly rewarded. In our own culture the work of a mother is undervalued and often regarded as a not very attractive or estimable occupation. It is paid only indirectly and a woman who makes it her main occupation is generally placed in a position of economic dependence. The success of the family, however, rests equally upon the work of the mother and the work of the father. Whether the mother keeps house or works independently, her work as a mother does not play a lower role than the work of her husband.”
― Alfred Adler, WHAT LIFE COULD MEAN TO YOU

“To be human means to feel inferior.”
― Alfred Adler

“We learn in friendship to look with the eyes of another person, to listen with her ears, and to feel with her heart.”
― Alfred Adler

“We must interpret a bad temper as a sign of inferiority.”
― Alfred Adler

“A private meaning is in fact no meaning at all. Meaning is only possible in communication: a word which meant something to one person only would really be meaningless. It is the same with our aims and actions; their only meaning is their meaning for others. Every human being strives for significance; but people always make mistakes if they do not see that their whole significance must consist in their contribution to the lives of others. An”
― Alfred Adler, WHAT LIFE COULD MEAN TO YOU

“Nobody adopts antisocial behavior unless they fear that they will fail if they remain on the social side of life.”
― Alfred Adler

“We are self-determined by the meaning we give to our experiences; and there is probably something of a mistake always involved when we take particular experiences as the basis for our future life. Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations. There”
― Alfred Adler, WHAT LIFE COULD MEAN TO YOU

“A fight with a child is always a losing fight: he can never be beaten or won to cooperation by fighting. In these struggles the weakest always carries the day. Something is demanded of him which he refuses to give; something which can never be gained by such means. An incalculable amount of tension and useless effort would be spared in this world if we realized that cooperation and love can never be won by force.”
― Alfred Adler, WHAT LIFE COULD MEAN TO YOU

“There is no such thing as talent. There is pressure.”
― Alfred Adler

“Distorted history boasts of bellicose glory... and seduces the souls of boys to seek mystical bliss in bloodshed and in battles.”
― Alfred Adler

“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.”
― Alfred Adler

“These three ties, therefore, set three problems: how to find an. occupation which will enable us to survive under the limitations set by the nature of the earth; how to find a position among our fellows, so that we may cooperate and share the benefits of cooperation; how to accommodate ourselves to the fact that we live in two sexes and that the continuance and furtherance of mankind depends upon our love-life. Individual”
― Alfred Adler, WHAT LIFE COULD MEAN TO YOU

“No man can think, feel, will, nor even dream, without everything being defined, conditioned, limited, directed by a goal which floats before him.”
― Alfred Adler

“Courage is not an ability one either possesses or lacks. Courage is the willingness to engage in a risk-taking behavior regardless of whether the consequences are unknown or possibly adverse. We are capable of courageous behavior provided we are willing to engage in it.”
― Alfred Adler

“It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.”
― Alfred Adler

“It was only because men learned to cooperate that we could make the great discovery of the division of labor; a discovery which is the chief security for the welfare of mankind. To preserve human life would not be possible if each individual attempted to wrest a living from the earth by himself with no cooperation and no results of cooperation in the past. Through the division of labor we can use the results of many different kinds of training and organize many different abilities so that all of them contribute to the common welfare and guarantee relief from insecurity and increased opportunity for all the members of society. It”
― Alfred Adler, WHAT LIFE COULD MEAN TO YOU