Understanding Human Nature Quotes

“we limit ourselves to normal cases of mutual influence, we find that those people are most capable of being influenced who are most amenable to reason and logic, those whose social feeling has been least distorted. On the contrary, those who thirst for superiority and desire domination are very difficult to influence. Observation teaches us this fact every day.”
― Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature

“Any man's value, therefore, is determined by his attitude toward his fellow men, and by the degrees in which he partakes of the division of labor which communal life demands.”
― Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature

“Only too many human beings have acquired the habit of recognizing an authority without testing it. The public wants to be fooled. It wants to swallow every bluff without subjecting it to rational examination. Such activity will never bring any order into the communal life of mankind but will lead only, again and again, to the revolt of those who have been imposed upon.”
― Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature

“It is not uncommon for the youngest child to outstrip every other member of the family and become its most capable member.”
― Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“As a matter of fact, in our personal lives, as in the lives of all peoples, inferiorities are not to be considered as the source of all evil. Only the situation can determine whether they are assets or liabilities.”
― Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The psychology of personality

“Individuals with a pathological power-drive seek to secure their position in life with extraordinary efforts, with exceptional haste and impatience, with violent impulses, and all without the slightest consideration for others. These are the children whose behaviour is characterized by their frantic strivings towards an exaggerated goal of dominance. Their attacks on the rights of others in turn put their own rights at risk; they are against the world and the world is therefore against them.”
― Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“Our whole way of living inhibits that necessary intimate contact with our fellow men, which is essential for the development of the science and art of knowing human nature. Since we do not find sufficient contact with our fellow men, we become their enemies. Our behavior towards them is often mistaken, and our judgments frequently false, simply because we do not adequately understand human nature.”
― Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The psychology of personality

“Luận điểm thiết yếu đối với đời sống cộng đồng chính là: Nền tảng của một đánh giá đạo đức không nằm ở tính cách của một người, mà nằm ở chỉ số thái độ của người này đối với môi trường và mối quan hệ đối với xã hội mà anh ta đang sống.”
― Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature

“Hãy hết sức khiêm tốn khi đưa ra nhận xét về bất cứ ai và trên hết, đừng bao giờ cho phép bản thân phán xét về giá trị đạo đức của một con người!
Chúng ta hãy cảm thông với những con người sống trong nhầm tưởng, bởi bản thân chúng ta hiểu rõ những gì đang xảy ra bên trong con người này, còn bản thân họ thì không.”
― Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature

“Việc mọi người nghĩ về bạn thế nào, bạn đánh giá bản thân ra sao không quá quan trọng, bởi thái độ đối với xã hội loài người mời là yếu tố quyết định mọi mong muốn, hứng thú và hành động của mỗi cá nhân.”
― Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature

“Để trưởng thành, mỗi người buộc phải có nhận thức sâu sắc về nhân loại cũng như thực hành nghệ thuật làm người.”
― Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature

“Bản thân tự do sẽ sinh ra những người khổng lồ, còn ép buộc chỉ giết hại và tàn phá mà thôi.”
― Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature

“No matter how many mistakes people make, they will either blame the rest of humankind, or feel that their situation is irrevocable. We very seldom find anyone who has come up against obstacles or taken a wrong turning, and stopped to consider where they went wrong.”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“Perhaps more widespread than the genuine feeling is its conventional misuse. This consists of posing as an extremely public-spirited, exaggeratedly sympathetic individual. Thus there are people who crowd to the scene of a disaster to achieve a mention in the newspapers and get themselves noticed without actually doing anything to help the victims.”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“We must classify all irascible, angry, acrimonious individuals as enemies of society and enemies of life. We must again call attention to the fact that their striving for power is rooted in their feeling of inferiority. No human beings confident of their own power need to show these aggressive, violent reactions and gestures.”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“Such unfortunates tend even to be proud of their ill-luck, as though some supernatural power had caused it. Examine this point of view more closely and you will find that vanity is rearing its ugly head again!”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“That perceptive psychologist, Dostoevsky, said: ‘We can judge a person’s character much better by his laughter than by any boring psychological examination.”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“All these things – her bed-wetting, her fear of the dark, her terror of being alone, and her attempted suicide – were directed towards the same goal. To us they mean: ‘I must stay close to my mother’, or ‘Mother must pay constant attention to me!”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“Once someone assumes the point of view that life’s difficulties must be avoided, they are inviting anxiety in, and once in, it will reinforce that point of view.”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“there is a natural law of the equality of all human beings. This law cannot be broken without immediately producing opposition and discord. It is one of the fundamental laws of human society.”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“No one can raise themselves above society and demonstrate their power over others, without simultaneously arousing the opposition of those who want to prevent their success.”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“the very least we can demand of individuals is this: that they should not deliberately flaunt any temporary appearance of superiority over others.”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“no one pays any attention to the fact that many of the individuals who spend their lives chasing after gold are spurred on merely by their vain desire for God-like power.”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“In our civilization there is one thing that does seem to have magical powers, and that is money. Many people believe that you can do anything you like with money.”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“Ambition and vanity provoke such complications and subterfuges in life. They destroy all frankness, and all true pleasures, all true joy and happiness in life, all for what on closer examination turns out to be a mere fallacy.”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“An Italian criminal psychologist once said: ‘When a human being seems too good to be true, when his philanthropy and humanity assume conspicuous proportions, we should be on our guard.”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“We see just another form of vanity in such behaviour, where individuals are reluctant to put themselves to the test. It is vanity that impels them to make their detour at precisely the moment when a decision is about to be made concerning their ability. They think of the glory they would lose if they failed, and begin to doubt their own ability;”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“In everyday life, however, it makes little difference who is right and who is wrong, since the only thing that counts is getting things done and making a contribution to the lives of others.”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“No other vice is so well designed to stunt the free development of human beings as personal vanity, which forces individuals to approach every person and every event with the query: ‘What do I get out of this?”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality

“Taken too far, vanity becomes exceedingly dangerous. Over and above the fact that vanity leads individuals to all kinds of useless activity more concerned with appearance than essence, and makes them think constantly either of themselves, or of other people’s opinions of them, the greatest danger of vanity is that it disconnects individuals from reality.”
― Colin Brett Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality