Top 25 Alfred Adler Quotes

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.

The test of one’s behavior pattern is their relationship to society, relationship to work and relationship to sex.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

It is the patriotic duty of every man to lie for his country.

The only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well.

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.

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.

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.

Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority.

War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.

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

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

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.

To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman.

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

War is organized murder and torture against our brothers.