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The striving for significance, this sense of yearning, always points out to us that all psychological phenomena contain a movement that starts from a feeling of inferiority and reach upward. The theory of Individual Psychology of psychological compensation states that the stronger the feeling of inferiority, the higher the goal for personal power.

— Alfred Adler

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More quotes by Alfred Adler

Man knows much more than he understands.

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

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

What Life Should Mean to You (1937)

To be human means to feel inferior.

Nietzsche's "will to power" and "will to seem" embrace many of our views, which again resemble in some respects the views of Féré and the older writers, according to whom the sensation of pleasure originates in a feeling of power, that of pain in a feeling of feebleness.

The Neurotic Constitution (1912)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Alfred Adler (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.