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.

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.

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.

The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, with the truth.

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.

Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

The neurotic is nailed to the cross of his fiction.

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.

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.

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

Man knows much more than he understands.

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.

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.

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

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.