Alfred Adler Quotes

Alfred Adler was a renowned psychologist who is best known for his psychological method of individual psychology. He emphasized the importance of understanding the whole person and stressed that human behavior is motivated by a need to feel significant. His thinking has had a profound influence on modern psychology and his quotes offer valuable insight into human behavior. Here are some of the best quotes from Alfred Adler that will help you better understand yourself and others.

  • 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.

    Alfred Adler
  • Follow your heart but take your brain with you.

    Alfred Adler
  • Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority.

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

    Alfred Adler
  • Every therapeutic cure, and still more, any awkward attempt to show the patient the truth, tears him from the cradle of his freedom from responsibility and must therefore reckon with the most vehement resistance.

    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.

    Alfred Adler
  • My difficulties belong to me!

    Alfred Adler
  • 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.

    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.

    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
  • 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.

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

    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.

    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
  • 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.

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

    Alfred Adler
  • 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.

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

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

    Alfred Adler
  • We must interpret a bad temper as a sign of inferiority.

    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
  • Man knows much more than he understands.

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

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

    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
  • Man knows much more than he understands.

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

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

    Alfred Adler
  • The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge to conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation.

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

    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.

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

    Alfred Adler
  • There is no such thing as talent. There is pressure.

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

    Alfred Adler
  • The neurotic is nailed to the cross of his fiction.

    Alfred Adler

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