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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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Alfred Adler
Age: 67 †
Born: 1870
Born: February 7
Died: 1937
Died: May 28
Ophthalmologist
Psychiatrist
Psychotherapist
Vienna
Austria
Interest
Suicides
Social
Prostitutes
Problem
Drunkards
Children
Failures
Lacking
Criminals
Psychotics
Suicide
Perverts
Failure
Neurotics

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Man knows much more than he understands.
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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.
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War is organized murder and torture against our brothers.
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It is one of the triumphs of human wit ... to conquer by humility and submissiveness ... to make oneself small in order to appear great ... such ... are often the expedients of the neurotic.
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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.
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In a country of such recent civilization as ours, whose almost limitless treasures of material wealth invite the risks of capital and the industry of labor, it is but natural that material interests should absorb the attention of the people to a degree elsewhere unknown.
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Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.
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A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.
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The mathematical life of a mathematician is short. Work rarely improves after the age of twenty-five or thirty. If little has been accomplished by then, little will ever be accomplished.
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Courage is not an ability one either possess or lacks. Courage is the willingness to engage in a risk-taking behavior regardless of whether the consequences are unknown or possibly adverse. We are capable of courageous behavior provided we are willing to engage in it. Given that life offers few guarantees, all living requires risk-taking.
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War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.
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To be human means to feel inferior.
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It is very obvious that we are not influenced by facts but by our interpretation of the facts.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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To injure another person through atonement is one of the most subtle devices of the neurotic, as when, for example, he indulges in self-accusations.
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If I didn't have this affliction, I would be the first. As a rule the if-clause contains an unfulfillable condition, or the patient's own arrangement, which only he can change.
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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.
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We must never neglect the patient's own use of his symptoms.
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