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

Alfred Adler

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Alfred Adler
Age: 67 †
Born: 1870
Born: February 7
Died: 1937
Died: May 28
Ophthalmologist
Psychiatrist
Psychotherapist
Vienna
Austria
Giving
Meanings
Situations
Determination
Determine
Determined
Situation
Give

More quotes by Alfred Adler

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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
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It is easy to believe that life is long and one's gifts are vast -- easy at the beginning, that is. But the limits of life grow more evident it becomes clear that great work can be done rarely, if at all.
Alfred Adler
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All failures are so because they lack social interest.
Alfred Adler
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Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. Hector Berlioz It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Alfred Adler
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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
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More important than innate disposition, objective experience, and environment is the subjective evaluation of these. Furthermore, this evaluation stands in a certain, often strange, relation to reality.
Alfred Adler
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In the company of friends, writers can discuss their books, economists the state of the economy, lawyers their latest cases, and businessmen their latest acquisitions, but mathematicians cannot discuss their mathematics at all. And the more profound their work, the less understandable it is.
Alfred Adler
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Far more unwaveringly, the neurotic keeps before his eye his God, his idol, his ideal of personality and clings to his guiding principle, losing sight in the meanwhile of reality, whereas the normal person is always ready to dispense with this crutch, this aid, and reckon unhampered with reality.
Alfred Adler
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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.
Alfred Adler
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All failures - neurotics, psychotics, criminals, drunkards, problem children, suicides, perverts, and prostitutes - are failures because they are lacking in social interest
Alfred Adler
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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.
Alfred Adler
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What is courage? Courage is the willingness to risk failure...There is only one danger I find in life, and that, indeed, is a real one. You may take too many precautions.
Alfred Adler
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The test of one's behavior pattern is their relationship to society, relationship to work and relationship to sex.
Alfred Adler
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My psychology belongs to everyone.
Alfred Adler
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The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.
Alfred Adler
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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
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Mathematics is pure language - the language of science. It is unique among languages in its ability to provide precise expression for every thought or concept that can be formulated in its terms.
Alfred Adler
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The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, with the truth.
Alfred Adler
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It is well known that those who do not trust themselves never trust others.
Alfred Adler
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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