Top 100 Frankl Quotes
#1. Frankl wondered whether "there may be such a thing as autobibliotherapy - healing through reading." Frankl's
Viktor E. Frankl
#2. Viktor Frankl said the Concentration camp survivalist said no matter how much mental or physical abuse had been given nobody could cause him to think about anything he didn't want to think about
Bob Proctor
#3. No matter how you really feel at the moment or what is happening in your life, resolve to remain cheerful and upbeat. As Viktor Frankl wrote in his bestselling book Man's Search for Meaning, The last of the human freedoms [is] to choose one's attitude in any given set of cricumstances.
Brian Tracy
#4. Frankl discovered that a human being's fundamental dignity lies in his capacity to choose his response to any situation - his response-ability.
Fred Kofman
#5. the book Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, he wrote about how he survived a Nazi concentration camp by creating a Why every day: a reason to live, to try - a reason not to give up. It would have been much easier to give up, Frankl noted, and most did.
Robert J. Langone
#6. According to Viktor Frankl, a person finds identity only to the extent that "he commits himself to something beyond himself, to a cause greater than himself."4 The meaning of our lives emerges in the surrender of ourselves to an adventure of becoming who we are not yet.
Brennan Manning
#7. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his psychiatric practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering, but we can choose how to find meaning in it and move forward with renewed purpose.
Sophie Sabbage
#8. One of the most inspirational people I have ever known is Viktor Frankl,
Stephen R. Covey
#9. Half a century ago, the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl wrote that happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy - it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#11. Frankl went on to say it wasn't pleasure mankind was looking for, that men only sought pleasure when they couldn't find meaning. If a man has no sense of meaning, Frankl argued, he will numb himself with pleasure.
Donald Miller
#12. They [Nazi captors]had more liberty, more options to choose from in their environment; but he [Viktor Frankl] had more freedom, more internal power to exercise his options.
Stephen R. Covey
#13. As part of his life-saving therapy with suicidal patients and his own experience in a Nazi concentration camp, Frankl learned there are three things that give meaning to life: first, a project; second, a significant relationship; and third, a redemptive view of suffering.
Jeff Goins
#14. I think Republicans need to have their staffers reading less Ayn Rand and having them read Dr. Viktor Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning more.
Rob Zerban
#15. Psychiatrist and Auschwitz survivor, Viktor Frankl, stated, ... man is by no means merely a product of heredity and environment. There is a third element: decision. Man ultimately decides for himself!
Alice A. Kemp
#16. 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
#17. A St. Louis oncology nurse quoted Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl to States News Service in 2012: " 'What is to give light must endure burning.' I think people who care for others understand. Caregiving is painful.
Alexandra Robbins
#18. When we are no longer able to change the situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." - Victor Frankl
Peter Voogd
#19. In the midst of the most degrading circumstances imaginable, Frankl used the human endowment of self-awareness to discover a fundamental principle about the nature of man: Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.
Stephen R. Covey
#20. Frankl hypothesized that we have three parts to our nature:
Stephen R. Covey
#21. 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
#22. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.
Viktor E. Frankl
#23. 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
#24. The perception of meaning, as I see it, more specifically boils down to becoming aware of a possibility against the background of reality or, to express it in plain words, to becoming aware of what can be done about a given situation.
Viktor E. Frankl
#25. In his creative work the artist is dependent on sources and resources deriving from the spiritual unconscious.
Viktor E. Frankl
#26. Even a genius cannot completely resist his Zeitgeist, the spirit of his time.
Viktor E. Frankl
#27. Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.
Viktor E. Frankl
#28. Man's last freedom is his freedom to choose how he will react in any given situation
Viktor E. Frankl
#29. Nietzsche: "He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How." He
Viktor E. Frankl
#30. The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing
Viktor E. Frankl
#31. We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: 1. by doing a deed; 2. by experiencing a value; and 3. by suffering.
Viktor E. Frankl
#32. For tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer. Only
Viktor E. Frankl
#33. 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
#34. Since Auschwitz, we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima, we know what is at stake.
Viktor E. Frankl
#35. If I don't get back home to my wife, and if you should see her again, then tell her that I talked of her daily, hourly. You remember. Secondly, I have loved her more than anyone. Thirdly, the short time I have been married to her outweighs everything, even all we have gone through here.
Viktor E. Frankl
#36. It isn't the past which holds us back, it's the future; and how we undermine it, today.
Viktor E. Frankl
#37. When a man cannot find meaning, he numbs himself with pleasure.
Viktor E. Frankl
#38. Man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.
Viktor E. Frankl
#39. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look then was more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
Viktor E. Frankl
#40. Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn.
Viktor E. Frankl
#41. To put it figuratively, the role played by a logotherapist is rather that of an eye specialist than of a painter. A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it, an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is.
Viktor E. Frankl
#42. Austrian public-opinion pollsters recently reported that those held in highest esteem by most of the people interviewed are neither the great artists nor the great scientists, neither the great statesmen nor the great sport figures, but those who master a hard lot with their heads held high.
Viktor E. Frankl
#44. if a book has one passage, one idea with the power to change a person's life, that alone justifies reading it, rereading it, and finding room for it on one's shelves.
Viktor E. Frankl
#45. Once an individual's search for meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering
Viktor E. Frankl
#46. 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
#47. These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning in life in a general way.
Viktor E. Frankl
#48. Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning
Viktor E. Frankl
#49. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.
Viktor E. Frankl
#50. 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
#51. 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
#52. Man's search for meaning is the chief motivation of his life.
Viktor E. Frankl
#53. We do not ask life what the meaning of life is. Life asks us, what is the meaning of your life. And life demands our answer.
Viktor E. Frankl
#54. And I quoted from Nietzsche: That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.
Viktor E. Frankl
#56. 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
#57. Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
Viktor E. Frankl
#58. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions. Our
Viktor E. Frankl
#59. I never would have made it if I could not have laughed. It lifted me momentarily out of this horrible situation, just enough to make it livable.
Viktor E. Frankl
#60. Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.
Viktor E. Frankl
#61. Life asks of every individual a contribution, and it is up to that individual to discover what it should be
Viktor E. Frankl
#62. There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life.
Viktor E. Frankl
#63. The consciousness of one's inner value is anchored in higher, more spiritual things, and cannot be shaken by camp life. But how many free men, let alone prisoners, possess it?
Viktor E. Frankl
#64. No one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.
Viktor E. Frankl
#65. Psychological observations of the prisoners have shown that only the men who allowed their inner hold on their moral and spiritual selves to subside eventually fell victim to the camp's degenerating influences.
Viktor E. Frankl
#66. The choices humans make should be active rather than passive.
Viktor E. Frankl
#67. The incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading" so that "he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy.
Viktor E. Frankl
#68. 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
#69. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
Viktor E. Frankl
#70. 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
#71. What does Spinoza say in his Ethics? - "Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam." Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. The
Viktor E. Frankl
#72. Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death
Viktor E. Frankl
#73. Sunday neurosis, that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest.
Viktor E. Frankl
#74. Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
Viktor E. Frankl
#75. No one can take away my freedom to choose how I will react.
Viktor E. Frankl
#76. 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
#77. I try to do everything as soon as possible, and not at the last moment. This ensures that, when I am overburdened with work, I will not face the added pressure of knowing that something is still to be done.
Viktor E. Frankl
#78. Such widespread phenomena as depression, aggression and addiction are not understandable unless we recognize the existential vacuum underlying them.
Viktor E. Frankl
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.
Viktor E. Frankl
#82. When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Viktor E. Frankl
#83. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.
Viktor E. Frankl
#84. No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.
Viktor E. Frankl
#85. 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
#86. Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land.
Viktor E. Frankl
#87. I was horrified, but this was just as well, because step by step we had to become accustomed to a terrible and immense horror.
Viktor E. Frankl
#88. 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
#89. What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms.
Viktor E. Frankl
#90. Every age has its own collective neurosis, and every age needs its own psychotherapy to cope with it.
Viktor E. Frankl
#91. 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
#93. 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
#94. This is the core of the human spirit ... If we can find something to live for - if we can find some meaning to put at the center of our lives - even the worst kind of suffering becomes bearable.
Viktor E. Frankl
#95. It is always important to have something yet to do in life.
Viktor E. Frankl
#96. It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.
Viktor E. Frankl
#98. 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
#99. How can we dare to predict the behavior of man? We may predict the movements of a machine, of an automaton; more than this, we many even try to predict the mechanisms or "dynamisms" of the human psyche as well. But man is more than psyche.
Viktor E. Frankl
#100. Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a "secondary rationalization" of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.
Viktor E. Frankl
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