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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
Children
Failures
Lacking
Criminals
Psychotics
Suicide
Perverts
Failure
Neurotics
Interest
Suicides
Social
Prostitutes
Problem
Drunkards

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Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.
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Follow your heart always, and remember to take your head along with you.
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The self-bound individual always forgets that his self would be safeguarded better and automatically the more he prepares himself for the welfare of mankind, and that in this respect no limits are set for him.
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The only worthwhile achievements of man are those which are socially useful.
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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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A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.
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Nobody adopts antisocial behaviour unless they fear that they will fail if they remain on the social side of life.
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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.
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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.
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Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority.
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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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There is no such thing as talent. There is pressure.
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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.
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Each generation has its few great mathematicians, and mathematics would not even notice the absence of the others. They are useful as teachers, and their research harms no one, but it is of no importance at all. A mathematician is great or he is nothing.
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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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To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman.
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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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Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.
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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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It is well known that those who do not trust themselves never trust others.
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