Alfred Adler

"The past does not predetermine the future; only our interpretation of it does."

"A person's worth is not measured by comparison to others but by their contribution to the whole."

"The only real failure is surrender; everything else is an opportunity to learn."

"Encouragement is the oxygen the human soul needs to survive."

"The goal of education is to create citizens who contribute to society."

"We must understand that every person is fighting a battle we know nothing about."

"The greatest wealth is health."

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, we feel a responsibility for the accuracy and fidelity of every act and word."

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather assessment that something else is more important than fear."

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

"A person's behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge."

"Every person has an inferiority complex. The only difference lies in whether we acknowledge it or not."

"Feelings of inferiority rule the world, not from the effect of any real inferiority, but from the bad use which has been made of those feelings by those on top."

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

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

"All failures are essentially failures in human relationships; all failures are failures in love."

"Being imperfect is what makes us human; striving to improve ourselves is what makes us wise."

"The person who has no sense of humor has lost a precious gift."

"We are not concerned with how much knowledge you have accumulated, but rather with how that knowledge is being applied."

"To be human means we are all capable of both good and evil."

"Our task is not to produce perfect people, but to produce cooperative human beings."

"The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original dimensions."

"We cannot think, feel, or act without direction. The direction is given by our ideals."

"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a process to be lived fully."

"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."

"The ability to recover from setbacks distinguishes those who succeed from those who merely exist."

"Every individual acts and is motivated by social interest and the need to belong."

"Belonging is a fundamental human need, even more basic than security."

"The concept of 'normal' does not exist in human psychology; we are all unique deviations from an average."

"A human being is always in the process of becoming; we are never static."