Alfred Adler

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

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.

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

All neurotic symptoms have as their object the task of safeguarding the patient's self-esteem and thereby also the lifeline into which he has grown.

Death is really a great blessing for humanity without it there could be no real progress. People who lived for ever would not any hamper and discourage the young, but they would themselves lack sufficient Stimulus to be creative.

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.

Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority.

If the truth is there, bad writing won't hurt it!

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

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

Man knows more than he understands.

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

My difficulties belong to me!

Neurosis is the natural, logical development of an individual who is comparatively inactive, filled with a personal, egocentric striving for superiority, and is therefore retarded in the development of his social interest, as we find regularly among

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.

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

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

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.

The human soul, as a part of the movement of life, is endowed with the ability to participate in the uplift, elevation, perfection, and completion.

The only normal people are the one's you don't know very well.

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.

The test of one's behavior pattern; relationship to society, relationship to one's work, relationship to sex.

There is a Law that man should love his neighbor as himself. In a few years it should be as natural to mankind as breathing or the upright gait; but if he does not learn it he must perish.

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

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

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.

To be human means to feel inferior.

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

War is organized murder and torture against our brothers.

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

We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a "getaway." We cannot love and be limited.

What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning -- and some of them many times over -- what do you find? That you can swim? Well -- 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!