QuoteProject
All failures - neurotics, psychotics, criminals, drunkards, problem children, suicides, perverts, and prostitutes - are failures because they are lacking in social interest
Alfred Adler
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Adler suggests that various societal failures stem from a lack of connection and concern for others.

This quote by Alfred Adler highlights the notion that individuals who struggle with significant issues, such as mental health problems, criminal behavior, or addiction, are often failing to cultivate healthy social interests. Adler emphasizes the importance of community and social relationships in achieving mental well-being, arguing that individuals thrive when they are engaged with and care for others.

Themes

FailureSocial InterestMental HealthRelationshipsConnection

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about mental health awareness, this quote can highlight the importance of social connections.

More from Alfred Adler

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.
Alfred AdlerRead
War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.
Alfred AdlerRead
Every individual acts and suffers in accordance with his peculiar teleology, which has all the inevitability of fate, so long as he does not understand it.
Alfred AdlerRead
The science of the mind can only have for its proper goal the understanding of human nature by every human being, and through its use, brings peace to every human soul.
Alfred AdlerRead
What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning - and some of them many times over - what do you find? That you can swim? Well - life is just the same as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live!
Alfred AdlerRead
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.
Alfred AdlerRead

Similar quotes

Though the eye is small, the soul which sees through it is greater and vaster than all the things which it perceives. In fact, it is so great that it includes all objects, however large or numerous, within itself. For it is not so much that you are within the cosmos as that the cosmos is within you.
Meher BabaRead
Let evil wait for the day on which it must fall.
Stephen KingRead
You see but your shadow when you turn your back to the sun.
Khalil GibranRead
The mullahs of the Islamic world and the mullahs of the Hindu world and the mullahs of the Christian world are all on the same side. And we are against them all.
Arundhati RoyRead
We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this.
Woodrow WilsonRead
Many people believe that our lives end not when we die but when the very last person who knew us dies. Memory is part of it, yes, but I think it's much more than memory.
Douglas HofstadterRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.