"It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them"
About this Quote
Adler is poking at a comforting modern myth: that having principles is the same as being principled. “Fight” flatters the ego. It’s public, dramatic, and—crucially—simpler. You pick a side, declare your loyalty, absorb the warm glow of righteousness. Living up to principles is quieter and brutally specific. It happens in the unphotogenic moments: when nobody’s clapping, when your “values” cost you convenience, status, or a petty victory.
As a psychologist, Adler isn’t moralizing from a pulpit; he’s diagnosing a common detour around self-examination. His work emphasized social feeling and the ways people manage inferiority with compensations. Fighting for principles can become exactly that: a compensation strategy, a way to convert inner conflict into outward combat. You can be “against” hypocrisy, injustice, or corruption without having to confront the smaller hypocrisies at home: the manipulations, the resentments, the everyday rationalizations that keep a self-image intact.
The line also carries an implied critique of ideological theater. Causes are alluring partly because they outsource ethical labor to slogans and enemies. If your principles are mostly exercised as opposition, they never have to survive contact with your habits. Adler’s point stings because it’s actionable: the true test of a principle isn’t how loudly you defend it, but how consistently it governs your choices when defending it would be easier than obeying it.
As a psychologist, Adler isn’t moralizing from a pulpit; he’s diagnosing a common detour around self-examination. His work emphasized social feeling and the ways people manage inferiority with compensations. Fighting for principles can become exactly that: a compensation strategy, a way to convert inner conflict into outward combat. You can be “against” hypocrisy, injustice, or corruption without having to confront the smaller hypocrisies at home: the manipulations, the resentments, the everyday rationalizations that keep a self-image intact.
The line also carries an implied critique of ideological theater. Causes are alluring partly because they outsource ethical labor to slogans and enemies. If your principles are mostly exercised as opposition, they never have to survive contact with your habits. Adler’s point stings because it’s actionable: the true test of a principle isn’t how loudly you defend it, but how consistently it governs your choices when defending it would be easier than obeying it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Honesty & Integrity |
|---|---|
| Source | Aphorism attributed to Alfred Adler: "It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them." (see Wikiquote: Alfred Adler) |
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