01UndatedNo-one will be able to make us believe that man is a sublimated animal once we can show that within him there is a repressed angel.Viktor E. Frankl / quote ↗
02UndatedIf you treat people to a vision of themselves, if you apparently overrate them, you make them become what they are capable of becoming.Viktor E. Frankl / quote ↗
03UndatedWe 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 / quote ↗
04UndatedDon’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…as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.Viktor E. Frankl / quote ↗
05UndatedEven though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.Viktor E. Frankl / quote ↗
06UndatedAt the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal's behavior is embedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people tell him to do (totalitarianism).Viktor E. Frankl / quote ↗
07UndatedWe 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. We need to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—hourly and daily. 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 answers to its problems and to fulfill the task which it constantly sets for each individual.Viktor E. Frankl / quote ↗
08UndatedIf there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.Viktor E. Frankl / quote ↗
09UndatedA 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 / quote ↗
10UndatedLove 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 in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be 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 of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true. In logotherapy, love is not interpreted as a mere epiphenomenon of sexual drives and instincts in the sense of a so-called sublimation. Love is as primary a phenomenon as sex. Normally, sex is a vehicle of expression for love. Sex is justified, even sanctified, as soon as, but only as long as, it is a vehicle of love. Thus love is not understood as a mere side-effect of sex; rather, sex is a way of expressing the experience of that ultimate togetherness which is called love.Viktor E. Frankl / quote ↗
12UndatedNo one has the right to do wrong, even if wrong has been done to them.Viktor E. Frankl / quote ↗
13UndatedEverything 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.Viktor E. Frankl / quote ↗
14UndatedThe last of human freedoms - the ability to chose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances.Viktor E. Frankl / quote ↗
15UndatedChallenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.Viktor E. Frankl / quote ↗
16UndatedA 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 / quote ↗
17UndatedIf there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.Viktor E. Frankl / quote ↗
18UndatedHappiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.Viktor E. Frankl / quote ↗
19UndatedTo the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.'Viktor E. Frankl / quote ↗
21UndatedLive as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.Viktor E. Frankl / quote ↗
22UndatedThere 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 / quote ↗
24UndatedA thought transfixed me: 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 the highest goal to which man can aspire.Viktor E. Frankl / quote ↗
