Top 100 Viktor E. Frankl Quotes

#1. He describes poignantly the prisoners who gave up on life, who had lost all hope for a future and were inevitably the first to die.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #19599
#2. And as long as a self is driven by an id to a Thou, it is not a matter of love, either. In love the self is not driven by the id, but rather

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #30402
#3. Even a genius cannot completely resist his Zeitgeist, the spirit of his time.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #52773
#4. Man's last freedom is his freedom to choose how he will react in any given situation

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #57014
#5. Nietzsche: "He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How." He

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #69573
#6. The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #74053
#7. View your life from your funeral, looking back at your life experiences, what have you accomplished? What would you have wanted to accomplish but didn't? What were the happy moments? What were the sad? What would you do again, and what you wouldn't

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #94097
#8. It isn't the past which holds us back, it's the future; and how we undermine it, today.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #101174
#9. Faith is trust in ultimate meaning.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #137837
#10. Has all this suffering, this dying around us, a meaning? For, if not, then ultimately there is no meaning to survival; for a life whose meaning depends upon such a happenstance - as whether one escapes or not - ultimately would not be worth living at all.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #146100
#11. What matters is not the features of our character or the drives and instincts per se, but rather the stand we take toward them. And the capacity to take such a stand is what makes us human beings.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #179635
#12. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #184351
#13. most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #213747
#14. Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #237773
#15. The choices humans make should be active rather than passive.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #276061
#16. I have known successful businessmen who, upon retirement, lost all zest for life. Their work had given their lives meaning. Often it was the only thing that had given their lives meaning and, without it, they spent day after day sitting at home, depressed, with nothing to do.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #306535
#17. I mentioned earlier how everything that was not connected with the immediate task of keeping oneself and one's closest friends alive lost its value.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #307857
#18. Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #333130
#19. No one can take away my freedom to choose how I will react.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #345908
#20. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #350649
#21. We cannot, after all, judge a biography by its length, by the number of pages in it; we must judge by the richness of the contents ... Sometimes the 'unfinisheds' are among the most beautiful symphonies.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #360346
#22. Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #374276
#23. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #380670
#24. It is our responsibility to look for meaning in life, even in the darkest times, and whatever the circumstances we always have a vestige of free will.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #394723
#25. Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #395271
#26. Research work done on unemployed miners has shown that they suffer from a peculiar sort of deformed time - inner time - which is a result of their unemployed state.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #420777
#27. A life of short duration ... could be so rich in joy and love that it could contain more meaning than a life lasting eighty years.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #435941
#28. God is the partner of your most intimate soliloquies

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #460339
#29. Strangely enough, a blow which does not even find its mark can, under certain circumstance, hurt more than one that finds its mark

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #475177
#30. It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #515554
#31. Suffering presents us with a challenge: to find our goals and purpose in our lives that make even the worst situation worth living through.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #523537
#32. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him - mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #571477
#33. Nothing is likely to help a person overcome or endure troubles than the consciousness of having a task in life.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #603603
#34. Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a
hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond
himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #614577
#35. When a person can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #624965
#36. At such a moment, it is not the physical pain which hurts the most (and this applies to adults as much as to punished children); it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #658182
#37. Fear makes come true that which one is afraid of.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #660547
#38. Man ultimately decides for himself! And in the end, education must be education towards the ability to decide

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #681140
#39. For as soon as we have used an opportunity and have actualized a potential meaning, we have done so once and for all. We have rescued it into the past/ ... /, wherein nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #702033
#40. People have enough to live by but nothing to live for;

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #711106
#41. Sports allow men to build up situations of emergency. What he then demands of himself is unnecessary achievement - and unnecessary sacrifice. He artificially creates the tension that he has been spared by affluent society.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #726238
#42. It is not the physical pain which hurts the most (and this applies to adults as much as to punished children); it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all. Strangely

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #747087
#43. The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory." In

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #750851
#44. Despair is suffering without meaning.

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Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #755529
#45. Every therapy must in some way, no matter how restricted, also be logotherapy.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #778504
#46. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #780869
#47. In times of crisis, people reach for meaning. Meaning is strength. Our survival may depend on our seeking and finding it.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #800931
#48. Logotherapy sees the human patient in all his humanness. I step up to the core of the patient's being. And that is a being in search of meaning, a being that is transcending himself, a being capable of acting in love for others.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #806716
#49. The more one forgives himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #840920
#50. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #842401
#51. The point is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #873946
#52. We have absolutely no control over what happens to us in life but what we have paramount control over is how we respond to those events.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #875895
#53. The immediate influence of behavior is always more effective than that of words.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #896861
#54. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #949440
#55. The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #954653
#56. It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #974369
#57. I think it was Lessing who once said, 'There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose'. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1007146
#58. If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1008290
#59. If hundreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1031363
#60. Psychologically, what was happening to the liberated prisoners could be called "depersonalization." Everything appeared unreal, unlikely, as in a dream. We could not believe it was true.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1077604
#61. You don't create your mission in life - you detect it.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1077990
#62. The last of human freedoms - the ability to chose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1085791
#63. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1133274
#64. But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1139433
#65. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1191623
#66. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1239396
#67. Our greatest human freedom is that, despite whatever our physical situation is in life, WE ARE ALWAYS FREE TO CHOOSE OUR THOUGHTS!

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1244336
#68. Instead of taking the camp's difficulties as a test of their inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1259171
#69. The last freedom is choosing your attitude.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1270639
#70. Man's inner strength may raise him above his outward fate.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1277802
#71. A man's character became involved to the point that he was caught in a mental turmoil which threatened all the values he held and threw them into doubt.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1291572
#72. Each of us carries a unique spark of the divine, and each of us is also an inseparable part of the web of life.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1331882
#73. Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1356815
#74. Now we can understand Schopenhauer when he said that mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate eternally between the two extremes of distress and boredom.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1367949
#75. Whatever we had gone through could still be an asset to us in the future. And

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1394876
#76. Success is total self-acceptance ...

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1409345
#77. What a man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1422780
#78. Even when it is not fully attained, we become better by striving for a higher goal.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1451808
#79. Logotherapy ... considers man as a being whose main concern consists in fulfilling a meaning and in actualizing values, rather than in the mere gratification and satisfaction of drives and instincts.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1455392
#80. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how".

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1482684
#81. Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1508646
#82. He yearned for privacy and for solitude. After my transportation to a so-called "rest camp," I had the rare fortune to find solitude for about five minutes at a time.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1535498
#83. As to the causation, of the feeling of meaningless, one may say, albeit in an oversimplifying way, that people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1540266
#84. They did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless. Naturally

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1556556
#85. Freedom" -- we repeated to ourselves, and yet we could not grasp it. We had said this word so often during all the years we dreamed about it, that it had lost its meaning. Its reality did not penetrate into our consciousness; we could not grasp the fact that freedom was ours.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1556830
#86. A human being is a deciding being.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1574340
#87. Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1621444
#88. Pain from problems and disappointments, etc., is inevitable in life, but suffering is a choice determined by whether you choose to compare your experience and pain to something better and therefore feel unlucky and bitter or to something worse and therefore feel lucky and grateful!

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1629471
#89. Pain is only bearable if we know it will end, not if we deny it exists.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1633139
#90. The transitoriness of our existence in now way makes it meaningless. But it does constitute our responsibleness; for everything hinges upon our realizing the essentially transitory possibilities.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1656634
#91. Suggested to him that we would promise each other to invent at least one amusing story daily, about some incident that could happen one day after our liberation. He

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1663967
#92. Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1666288
#93. This intensification of inner life helped the prisoner find a refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual poverty of his existence, by letting him escape into the past.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1680854
#94. Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1689355
#95. Either belief in God is unconditional or it is no belief at all.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1698892
#96. Thus, human existence-at least as long as it has not been neurotically distorted-is always directed to something, or someone, other than itself, be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter lovingly.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1787054
#97. Sleep [is like] a dove which has landed near one's hand and stays there as long as one does not pay any attention to it.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1826305
#98. Mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1826955
#99. I would say that our patients never really despair because of any suffering in itself! Instead, their despair stems in each instance from a doubt as to whether suffering is meaningful. Man is ready and willing to shoulder any suffering as soon and as long as he can see a meaning in it.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1827643
#100. It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl Quotes #1869724

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