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About this quote

What does it mean?
Defending principles in argument is simpler than embodying them in daily behavior.
In plain terms
Talking about values is easier than living them.
What can you take from it?
Align your actions with your stated beliefs.

Where it applies

  • personal conduct
  • conflict

Putting it to work

  • audit your behavior
  • practice what you preach

Questions to consider

  • Where do your words and actions differ?
  • What principle is hardest to live?

Another view

Sometimes living principles requires sacrifice that fighting does not.

More from Alfred Adler

  1. Man knows much more than he understands.

    Permalink to quote #4
  2. Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.

    Permalink to quote #6
  3. Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.

    Permalink to quote #3

Related quotes

  1. A person who knows all that is good and all that is true---as much as can be known---but does not resist evils, knows nothing.

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  2. Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth.

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  3. 'It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action.' (p. 8)

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