Viktor e. frankl quotes

Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that 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.

Just as a small fire is extinguished by the storm whereas a large fire is enhanced by it - likewise a weak faith is weakened by predicament and catastrophes whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them.

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.

Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality

You don't create your mission in life - you detect it.

You can take away my wife, you can take away my children, you can strip me of my clothes and my freedom, but there is one thing no person can ever take away from me - and that is my freedom to choose how I will react to what happens to me!

It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.

Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man-his courage and hope, or lack of them-and the state of immunity of his body will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect. The ultimate cause of my friend's death was that the expected liberation did not come and he was severely disappointed.

Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.

The last freedom is choosing your attitude.

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.

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.

Suffering presents us with a challenge: to find our goals and purpose in our lives that make even the worst situation worth living through.

We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation-just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer-we are challenged to change ourselves.

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.

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.

Ultimate freedom is a man's right to choose his attitude.

Nothing is likely to help a person overcome or endure troubles than the consciousness of having a task in life.

Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.

I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her own life.

It is always important to have something yet to do in life.

Our greatest human freedom is that, despite whatever our physical situation is in life, WE ARE ALWAYS FREE TO CHOOSE OUR THOUGHTS!

When a man cannot find meaning, he numbs himself with pleasure.

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.

God is the partner of your most intimate soliloquies

Despair is suffering without meaning.

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.

Don't aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run — in the long run, I say — success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.

Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

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."

Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one's belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one's right to believe, and obey, his own conscience.

The salvation of man is through love and in love.

Man's inner strength may raise him above his outward fate.

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.

It isn't the past which holds us back, it's the future; and how we undermine it, today.

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in its spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.

The point is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.

The more one forgets one’s own self, the more human the person becomes.

...being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets 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.... What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.

What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.

Humor was another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation.

For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.

If we take a man as he is, we make him worse, but if we take man as he should be we make him capable of becoming what he can be.

Man's search for meaning is the chief motivation of his life.

The one thing you can't take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.

Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose.

Self-actualization cannot be attained if it is made an end in itself, but only as a side effect of self-transcendence.

When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.

Life asks of every individual a contribution, and it is up to that individual to discover what it should be

No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.

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.

Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

And I quoted from Nietzsche: That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.

A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes - within the limits of endowment and environment- he has made out of himself. 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.

Either belief in God is unconditional or it is no belief at all.

No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being until he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.

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.

The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing

Success is total self-acceptance.

No one can take away my freedom to choose how I will react.

When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.

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.

If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.

In times of crisis, people reach for meaning. Meaning is strength. Our survival may depend on our seeking and finding it.

Even when it is not fully attained, we become better by striving for a higher goal.

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.

A human being is a deciding being.

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.

I do not forget any good deed done to me & I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.

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 is in store for him? "No, thank you," he will think. "Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these things are things that cannot inspire envy."

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

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

Pain is only bearable if we know it will end, not if we deny it exists.

Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.

For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. 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.

Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.

For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.

Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.

The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.

One evening, when we were already resting on the floor of our hut, dead tired, soup bowls in hand, a fellow prisoner rushed in and asked us to run out to the assembly grounds and see the wonderful sunset. Standing outside we saw sinister clouds glowing in the west and the whole sky alive with clouds of ever-changing shapes and colors, from steel blue to blood red. The desolate grey mud huts provided a sharp contrast, while the puddles on the muddy ground reflected the glowing sky. Then, after minutes of moving silence, one prisoner said to another, "How beautiful the world could be.

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.

Each of us carries a unique spark of the divine, and each of us is also an inseparable part of the web of life.

It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

There are two races of men in this world but only these two: the race of the decent man and the race of the indecent man.

Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.

Ironically enough, in the same way that fear brings to pass what one is afraid of, likewise a forced intention makes impossible what one forcibly wishes... 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.

Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.

Life requires of man spiritual elasticity, so that he may temper his efforts to the chances that are offered.

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.

Man can only find meaning for his existence in something outside himself.

Happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy - it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself.

Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.

The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected.

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose ones attitude in any given circumstance.

To suffer unecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved.

Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.

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.

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. It 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

In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps - concentration camps, that is - and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.

In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious "Yes" in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable gray of a dawning morning in Bavaria. "Et lux in tenebris lucet"-and the light shineth in the darkness.

Success, like happiness, is the unexpected side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.

The meaning of my life is to help others find meaning in theirs.

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.

One can choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.

What is to give light must endure burning.

Decisions, not conditions, determine what a man is.

Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features.

I do the unpleasant tasks before I do the pleasant ones.

For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

When we are not any lengthier capable to alter a predicament, we're challenged to alter ourselves

I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.

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

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

One should not search for an abstract meaning of life ... Life can be made meaningful in a threefold way: first, through what we give to life ... second, by what we take from the world ... third, through the stand we take toward a fate we no longer can change.

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.

Only to the extent that someone is living out this self transcendence of human existence, is he truly human or does he become his true self. He becomes so, not by concerning himself with his self's actualization, but by forgetting himself and giving himself, overlooking himself and focusing outward.

To be sure, man's search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health. 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. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how