Viktor E. Frankl

Quotes

• “A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental d...”
• “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away thei...”
• “A man's suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it wi...”
• “Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. In a similar sense suffering ...”
• “Was Du erlebst, kann keine Macht der Welt Dir rauben. (What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.) ...”
• “Love is as primary a phenomenon as sex. Normally, sex is a mode of expression for love. Sex is justified, even sanctifie...”
• “Thus far we have shown that the meaning of life always changes, but that it never ceases to be. According to logotherapy...”
• “I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibriu...”
• “Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates...”
• “In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may con...”
• “[M]ental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one ...”
• “Ironically enough, in the same way that fear brings to pass what one is afraid of, likewise a forced intention makes imp...”
• “People tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into...”
• “There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions...”
• “Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who in­ vented t...”
• “Freedom" -- we repeated to ourselves, and yet we could not grasp it. We had said this word so often during all the years...”
• “Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the...”
• “For as soon as we have used an opportunity and have actualized a potential meaning, we have done so once and for all. We...”
• “Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fu...”
• “A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to ...”
• “[T]here are two races of men in this world, but only these two -- the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the ind...”
• “Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of suffe...”
• “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 h...”
• “A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life, I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclai...”
• “For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not ...”
• “Happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's dedication to a ...”
• “To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to '...”
• “If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of li...”
• “The incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather...”
• “As to the causation, of the feeling of meaningless, one may say, albeit in an oversimplifying way, that people have enou...”
• “I think it was Lessing who once said, 'There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to los...”
• “We have come to know Man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; howev...”
• “Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. T...”
• “There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions...”
• “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 th...”
• “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set...”
• “Each of us has his own inner concentration camp... We must deal with, with forgiveness and patience-as full human beings...”
• “When we are no longer able to change a situation - just think of an incurable disease such as an inoperable cancer - we ...”
• “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies ...”
• “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away thei...”
• “We have absolutely no control over what happens to us in life but what we have paramount control over is how we respond ...”
• “If you treat people to a vision of themselves, if you apparently overrate them, you make them become what they are capab...”
• “No-one will be able to make us believe that man is a sublimated animal once we can show that within him there is a repre...”
• “A life of short duration...could be so rich in joy and love that it could contain more meaning than a life lasting eight...”
• “A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental d...”
• “Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a "secondary rationalization" of instinctual driv...”
• “In his creative work the artist is dependent on sources and resources deriving from the spiritual unconscious.”
• “A man who could not see the end of his"provisional existence" was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life.”
• “Life requires of man spiritual elasticity, so that he may temper his efforts to the chances that are offered.”
• “Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering.”