That man is a creature who needs order yet yearns for change is the creative contradiction at the heart of the laws which structure his conformity and define his deviancy.

Adler frames human behavior as a built-in tension: people depend on stability, predictability, and shared rules, yet they also seek novelty, autonomy, and transformation. Law, in this view, is not merely a neutral set of commands but a social mechanism that manages this contradiction by rewarding conformity and marking certain departures as “deviance.” The quote suggests that what counts as deviant is partly produced by the very legal structures meant to preserve order, and that creativity and change often arise from pressures against rigid norms. It also implies that societies continually renegotiate boundaries between acceptable innovation and punishable transgression.