Top 80 Ichiro Kishimi Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Children who have not been taught to confront challenges will try to avoid all challenges.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

52. “What is change?’ If we go out on a limb and use an extreme expression, carrying out change is ‘death itself’.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

53. “That one can act on the community, that is to say, on other people, and that one can feel “I am of use to someone.” Instead of feeling judged by another person as “good,” being able to feel, by way of one’s own subjective viewpoint, that “I can make contributions to other people.” It is at that point that, at last, we can have a true sense of our own worth. Everything we have been discussing about community feeling and encouragement connects here.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

54. “If one really has confidence in oneself, one doesn’t feel the need to boast. It’s because one’s feeling of inferiority is strong that one boasts.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

55. “A way of living in which one is constantly troubled by how one is seen by others is a self-centered lifestyle in which one’s sole concern is with the “I.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

56. “Does one choose recognition from others, or does one choose a path of freedom without recognition?”

— Ichiro Kishimi

57. “One needs to think not What will this person give me? but, rather, What can I give to this person? That is commitment to the community.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

58. “Could you respect an immature human being? And could you have a real feeling of being respected by someone who threatens you in a violent manner? There is no respect in communication with anger and violence. Rather, such communication invites contempt. That reprimand does not lead to substantive improvement is a self-evident truth.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

59. “Three things are needed at this point: “self-acceptance,” “confidence in others,” and “contribution to others.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

60. “You are probably rejecting normality because you equate being normal with being incapable. Being normal is not being incapable. One does not need to flaunt one’s superiority.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

61. “The children are not obeying you, they are only submitting to authority. They do not entertain the slightest thought of understanding you. They just cover their ears and shut their eyes and wait for the storm of your rage to pass.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

62. “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

63. “Rather than simply playing with them, enjoy the activity yourself. If you do, the children may at last have the real feeling that they are being recognised; that they are not being treated as children; that they are being given respect as individual human beings.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

64. “But you are unhappy now because you yourself chose being unhappy. Not because you were born under an unlucky star.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

65. “All you can do in regard to your own life is choose the best path that you believe in.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

66. “If you lived all alone, wouldn’t you be horribly lonely? PHILOSOPHER: Oh, but being alone isn’t what makes you feel lonely. Loneliness is having other people and society and community around you, and having a deep sense of being excluded from them. To feel lonely, we need other people. That is to say, it is only in social contexts that a person becomes an ‘individual’.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

67. “PHILOSOPHER: Instead of seeking approval, one has to approve oneself, with one’s own mind.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

68. “But we choose our lifestyles ourselves. It’s clear where the responsibility lies.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

69. “Answers from others are nothing more than stopgap measures; they’re of no value.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

70. “Being self-centred does not mean looking only at oneself because one likes oneself. In actuality, the opposite is the case, and it is because one is unable to accept oneself as one is, and because one is constantly beset with anxiety, that one has concern only for oneself.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

71. “Destiny is something you create with your own two hands.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

72. “Why is it necessary to be special? Probably because one cannot accept one’s normal self.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

73. “When you treat a person’s life as a vast narrative, there is an easily understandable causality and sense of dramatic development that creates strong impressions and is extremely attractive. But Adler, in denial of the trauma argument, states the following: ‘No experience is in itself a cause of our success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences – the so-called trauma – but instead we make out of them whatever suits our purposes.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

74. “We have to get past our obstinate self-centredness and stop trying to be the centre of the world. One has to break away from ‘me’. One has to break away from one’s pampered childhood lifestyle.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

75. “The fact that there are people who do not think well of you is proof that you are living in freedom.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

76. “We are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them is self-determining.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

77. “But if you are afraid to have confidence in others, in the long run, you will not be able to build deep relationships with anyone.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

78. “In every way, violence is a low-cost, easy means of communication. But before deeming it morally unacceptable, we must say that it is a rather immature form of conduct for people to engage in.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

79. “Viewed from the standpoint of the division of labour, all professions are honourable.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

80. “Children are not cruel – it’s just that they don’t know. They do not know what life is worth, or about other people’s pain.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

81. “Relationships in which people restrict each other eventually fall apart. Restriction... is a manifestation of the mind-set of attempting to control one’s partner, and also an idea founded on a sense of distrust.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

82. “You say you wish you had known this ten years ago. It is because Adler’s thought resonates with you now that you are thinking this. No one knows how you would have felt about it ten years ago. This discussion was something that you needed to hear now.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

83. “He is saying not just to love one’s neighbour, but to love them as much as one loves oneself. If one cannot love oneself, one cannot love others. If one cannot believe in oneself, one cannot believe in others. Please think of the phrase as carrying that connotation. You are insisting that you cannot believe in other people, but that is because you have not managed to truly believe in yourself.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

84. “The birth of society is, in other words, the birth of suffering.”

— Ichiro Kishimi

85. “There will always be more ‘you and I’, and more ‘everyone’, and larger communities that exist.”

— Ichiro Kishimi