42 Quotes by Karl A. Menninger

Neurotic means he is not as sensible as I am, and psychotic means he's even worse than my brother-in-law.

What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.

People repeat in adult life emotions they experience in childhood. Many of the people whom I spent the last 30 or 40 years treating at so much per minute wouldn't have needed any treatment at all if they had had the right care as children.

Our lives are shaped by those who love us as well as those who refuse to love us....

Once asked what action he would recommend if a person were to feel a nervous breakdown coming on: Lock up your house, go across the railroad tracks, and find someone in need and do something for him.

The adjuration to be "normal" seems shockingly repellent to me; I see neither hope nor comfort in sinking to that low level. I think it is ignorance that makes people think of abnormality only with horror and allows them to remain undismayed at the proximity of "normal" to average and mediocre. For surely anyone who achieves anything is, essentially, abnormal.

Love is a medicine for the sickness of the world; a prescription often given, too rarely taken....

Love cures people – both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.

What’s done to children, they will do to society.