Viktor Frankl Quotes - 28 quotes

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Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) was an influential psychiatrist, psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor. He is best known for developing logotherapy, a form of existential analysis. This approach, often called the "third school" of Viennese psychotherapy after Freud and Adler, emphasizes the search for m... show more

quote icon 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 Frankl

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quote icon Wo to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon 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 Frankl

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quote icon The immediate influence of behavior is always more effective than that of words

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon What man actually needs is not a tensionless state, but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down on these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which in store for him? "No, thank you," he will think. Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past…

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to fulfill it

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning in a sacrifice.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon To be sure, people tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon As to the causation of the feeling of meaninglessness, one may say, albeit in an oversimplifying vein, that people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon ...man considers only the stubble field of transitoriness and overlooks the full granaries of the past wherein he had salvaged once and for all his deeds...

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon What matters therefore is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon The choices humans make should be active rather than passive. In making personal choices we affirm our autonomy.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon Pleasure is, and must remain, a side-effect or by-product, and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon To be sure, a human being is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon The immediate influence of behavior is always more effective than that of words.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life. He may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon The prisoner who had lost faith in the future - his future - was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and become subject to mental and physical decay.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of trick learned while mastering the art of living.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon Ultimately man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he 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.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to be happy. Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically.

- Viktor Frankl

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quote icon Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

- Viktor Frankl

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