Top 35 Karen Horney Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “If you want to be proud of yourself, then do things in which you can take pride.”

— Karen Horney

2. “If I couldn’t be pretty, I decided I would be smart.”

— Karen Horney

3. “To search for truth about self is as valuable as to search for truth in other areas of life.”

— Karen Horney

4. “There is no good reason why we should not develop and change until the last day we live.”

— Karen Horney

5. “Like all sciences and all valuations, the psychology of women has hitherto been considered only from the point of view of men.”

— Karen Horney

6. “Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.”

— Karen Horney

7. “Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.”

— Karen Horney

8. “To find a mountain path all by oneself gives a greater feeling of strength than to take a path that is shown.”

— Karen Horney

9. “There is no such thing as a normal psychology that holds for all people.”

— Karen Horney

10. “We may feel genuinely concerned about world conditions, though such a concern should drive us into action and not into a depression.”

— Karen Horney

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11. “The view that women are infantile and emotional creatures, and as such, incapable of responsibility and independence is the work of the masculine tendency to lower women’s self-respect.”

— Karen Horney

12. “The most comprehensive formulation of therapeutic goals is the striving for wholeheartedness: to be without pretense, to be emotionally sincere, to be able to put the whole of oneself into one’s feelings, one’s work, one’s beliefs.”

— Karen Horney

13. “Concern should drive us into action, not into a depression.”

— Karen Horney

14. “The central inner conflict is one between the constructive forces of the real self and the obstructive forces of the pride system, between healthy growth and the drive to prove in actuality the perfection of the idealized self.”

— Karen Horney

15. “Is not the tremendous strength in men of the impulse to creative work in every field precisely due to their feeling of playing a relatively small part in the creation of living beings, which constantly impels them to an overcompensation in achievement?”

— Karen Horney

16. “Because it corresponds to a vital need, love is overvalued in our culture. It becomes a phantom – like success – carrying with it the illusion that it is a solution for all problems.”

— Karen Horney

17. “The perfect normal person is rare in our civilization.”

— Karen Horney

18. “Life as a therapist is ruthless; circumstances that are helpful to one neurotic may crush another.”

— Karen Horney

19. “That many-faceted thing called love succeeds in building bridges from the loneliness on this shore to the loneliness on the other one. These bridges can be of great beauty, but they are rarely built for eternity, and frequently they cannot tolerate too heavy a burden without collapsing.”

— Karen Horney

20. “Through the eclipse of large areas of the self, by repression and inhibition as well as by idealization and externalization, the individual loses sight of himself; he feels, if he does not actually become, like a shadow without weight and substance.”

— Karen Horney

21. “The conception of what is normal varies not only with the culture but also within the same culture, in the course of time.”

— Karen Horney

22. “If a person has had sufficient courage to discover an unpleasant truth about himself, one may safely trust his courage to be strong enough to carry him through.”

— Karen Horney

23. “There’s still such chaos in me. Still so little firmly outlined. Just like my face: a formless mass that only takes on shape through the expression of the moment. The searching for our selves is the most agonizing.”

— Karen Horney

24. “Pride and self-hate belong inseparably together; they are two expressions of one process.”

— Karen Horney

25. “The pride in intellect, or rather in the supremacy of the mind, is not restricted to those engaged in intellectual pursuits but is a regular occurrence in all neurosis.”

— Karen Horney

26. “Others are responsible for the trouble I am in – so I am entitled to repair. And what kind of repair would it be, if I made all the effort! Naturally, only a person who has lost constructive interest in his life can argue that way. It is no longer up to him to do something about his life; it is up to “them,” or to fate.”

— Karen Horney

27. “When he moves away from people, he wants neither to belong nor to fight, but keeps apart. He feels he has not much in common with them, they do not understand him somehow. He builds up a world of his own -with nature, with his dolls, his books, his dreams.”

— Karen Horney

28. “Many such relations are carried on under the camouflage of love, that is, under a subjective conviction of attachment, when actually the love is only the person’s clinging to others to satisfy his own needs.”

— Karen Horney

29. “The tenacity with which the neurotic adheres to any attitude is a sure indication that the attitude fulfills functions which seem indispensable in the framework of his neurosis.”

— Karen Horney

30. “The fact that compulsive drives for success will arise only in a competitive culture does not make them any less neurotic.”

— Karen Horney

31. “Pride in many diverse ways is the enemy of love.”

— Karen Horney

32. “Even though godlike in his imagination, he still lacks the earthy self-confidence of a simple shepherd.”

— Karen Horney

33. “For the analyst it is a source of never-ending astonishment how comparatively well a person can function with the core of himself not participating.”

— Karen Horney

34. “Whether we forget something we are not proud of, or embellish it, or blame somebody else, we want to save face by not owning up to shortcomings.”

— Karen Horney

35. “It is naturally a sign of inner liberation when a patient can squarely recognize his difficulties and take them with a grain of humor. But some patients at the beginning of analysis make incessant jokes about themselves, or exaggerate their difficulties in so dramatic a way that they will appear funny, while they are at the same time absurdly sensitive to any criticism. In these instances humor is used to take the sting out of an otherwise unbearable shame.”

— Karen Horney

36. “Patients coming for consultation complain about headaches, sexual disturbances, inhibitions in work, or other symptoms; as a rule, they do not complain about having lost touch with the core of their psychic existence.”

— Karen Horney