Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression

Not Pythagoras — actually Karen Horney Karen Horney 1885–1952 · German-born psychoanalyst
Disputed In copyright

From Horney’s 1942 book Self-Analysis: “We may feel genuinely concerned about world conditions, though such a concern should drive us into action and not into a depression.” The popular version drops the first half of the sentence. Nothing connects it to Pythagoras, and Wikiquote lists it among his misattributed quotes.

Last verified 3 Nov 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression” Karen Horney, Self-Analysis (1942). Often misattributed to Pythagoras. · Verbatim: “We may feel genuinely concerned about world conditions, though such a concern should drive us into action and not into a depression.”

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Karen Horney’s estate and/or W. W. Norton & Company). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Karen Horney — German-born psychoanalyst who practiced in the United States. Theme: "Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where it actually comes from

Work
Self-Analysis
Author
Karen Horney
Published
New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1942 (first edition)
Also cited from
The Collected Works of Karen Horney (1957), p. 154 (per Wikiquote)

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

The popular version keeps only the second half of the sentence, “Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression,” and is sometimes trimmed further to “…into action, not into a depression.”

Book scan (borrowable)
Self-Analysis, first edition, 1942, at the Internet Archive
Self-Analysis (Norton, 1942) at the Internet Archive

How we traced it

  • Wikiquote’s Pythagoras page ↗ lists the line under “Misattributed” and quotes the full sentence from The Collected Works of Karen Horney (1957), p. 154.
  • The Internet Archive holds the 1942 W. W. Norton first edition of Self-Analysis ↗. A full-text search of its scans finds the sentence “We may feel genuinely concerned about world conditions, though such a concern should drive us into action and not into a depression.”
  • Quotations by Women ↗ gives the same full sentence and credits it to “Karen Horney, Self-Analysis (1942).”
  • A Quote Investigator search ↗ for the phrase returns no article, so no specialist investigation is being overridden here.
In copyright

The sentence is from Self-Analysis, first published in the United States by W. W. Norton in 1942. Under our conservative rule, a work first published in 1931 or later is treated as in copyright. We did not check the renewal records. This page quotes one sentence for commentary.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

How it got pinned on Pythagoras

This is a 20th-century psychoanalyst’s sentence, cut down to a slogan and credited to an ancient Greek philosopher. It is not in any of Pythagoras’s sayings. No source we found shows how his name first got attached.

Pythagoras Wrong person

Wikiquote’s Pythagoras page ↗ puts the line in its “Misattributed” section and credits it to Karen Horney. It does not appear among the Pythagorean sayings on that page, such as the Symbols and the Golden Verses.

Karen Horney (shortened) Trimmed

Horney wrote “We may feel genuinely concerned about world conditions, though such a concern should drive us into action and not into a depression” (Quotations by Women, citing Self-Analysis, 1942 ↗). The popular version drops the opening clause, so the context of concern about world conditions is lost.

The words are Karen Horney’s, from her 1942 book Self-Analysis ↗, not Pythagoras’s.

Context

Why the source matters

In 1941 Horney left the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and founded the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (Wikipedia ↗). The next year W. W. Norton published Self-Analysis, which is the source this page traces the line to.

In the full sentence, the concern is specifically about world conditions, and Horney grants that it can be genuine before she says it should lead to action rather than depression. The trimmed version keeps the advice and drops that qualification, which is how it ended up reading like an all-purpose saying that could be credited to anyone, including Pythagoras.

Such a concern should drive us into action and not into a depression.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Resilience Courage

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: Pythagoras (Misattributed)en.wikiquote.org

Lists this line as misattributed to Pythagoras and cites Horney’s Collected Works (1957), p. 154
Self-Analysis (1942), Internet Archivearchive.org

Scan of the 1942 W. W. Norton first edition, which you can borrow
Quotations by Women: Karen Horneyquotationsbywomen.com

The full sentence, credited to Self-Analysis (1942)
Karen Horney, Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Horney’s life, her ideas and her bibliography, including Self-Analysis (Norton, 1942)
Quote Investigator searchquoteinvestigator.com

No QI article on this phrase

Psychoanalyst

About the real author

Karen Horney

1885–1952 · German-born psychoanalyst who practiced in the United States

Karen Horney was a German psychoanalyst whose later career was in the United States. She challenged parts of Freud’s theory, tracing differences between the psychology of men and women to culture rather than biology, and she is credited with founding feminist psychology. Her books for general readers include The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937) and Self-Analysis (1942), the source of this line.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Karen Horney, Self-Analysis (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1942). Wikiquote cites the same sentence from The Collected Works of Karen Horney (1957), p. 154.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression’?” Last verified 3 Nov 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/concern-should-drive-us-into-action-and-not-into-a/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied