Alfred Adler quotes

Alfred Adler was an Austrian medical doctor and psychotherapist, well known as the founder of individual psychology. His work emphasized the importance of social influences and the unique motivations of the individual. He developed influential concepts such as the inferiority complex and the drive for personal growth. Here are 56 of his quotes:

It is easier to fight for our principles than it is to live up to them. (Alfred Adler)
To be human means to feel inferior. View quote
Alfred Adler
The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well. View quote
Alfred Adler
The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions. View quote
Alfred Adler
Man knows much more than he understands. View quote
Alfred Adler
Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations. View quote
Alfred Adler
A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt dangerous. View quote
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. View quote
Alfred Adler
Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement. View quote
Alfred Adler
The striving for significance, this sense of yearning, always points out to us that all psychological phenomena contain a movement that starts from a feeling of inferiority and reach upward. The theory of Individual Psychology of psychological compensation states that the stronger the feeling of inferiority, the higher the goal for personal power. View quote
Alfred Adler
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. (Alfred Adler)
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. View quote
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. View quote
Alfred Adler
Follow your heart but take your brain with you. View quote
Alfred Adler
Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority. View quote
Alfred Adler
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. View quote
Alfred Adler
We must interpret a bad temper as a sign of inferiority. View quote
Alfred Adler
seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another. View quote
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. View quote
Alfred Adler
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. View quote
Alfred Adler
Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy. (Alfred Adler)
The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, with the truth. View quote
Alfred Adler
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. View quote
Alfred Adler
My difficulties belong to me! View quote
Alfred Adler
There is no such thing as talent. There is pressure. View quote
Alfred Adler