Viktor E. Frankl was a psychiatrist who lived through the Holocaust. He is known for his work on logotherapy, which is a type of therapy that focuses on the meaning of life. Viktor E. Frankl Quotes are a testament to his wisdom and understanding of the human condition.
Viktor Frankl was born in 1905 in Vienna, Austria. He was a neurologist and psychiatrist, who experienced the horrors of World War II as a concentration camp inmate. He wrote about his experiences in a book entitled, “Man’s Search for Meaning.” This book has been translated into many languages and is one of the most widely read books about the Holocaust.
The meaning of life and suffering according to Viktor E. Frankl is one of the most important topics that he discusses in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning. In it, he argues that the meaning of life is not something that is predetermined, but something that we must find for ourselves. He also believes that suffering is not meaningless, but can be used to find meaning in life.
Viktor E. Frankl is considered one of the most influential psychiatrists of the 20th century. Frankl’s philosophy has been highly influential in the fields of psychology and psychiatry, and his work continues to be studied and applied today.
Here are some of Viktor E. Frankl quotes on meaning and purpose.
60 Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
- “The meaning of life is to give life meaning.”
2. “If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.”
3. “Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.”
4. “Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality”
5. “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
6. “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.”
7. “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.”
8. “In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
9. “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.”
10. “Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.”
Famous Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
11. “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather 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; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
12. “Long ago we had passed the stage of asking what was the meaning of life, a naïve query which understands life as the attaining of some aim through the active creation of something of value.”
13. “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
14. “So live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”
15. “I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsiblity on the West Coast.”
16. “The salvation of man is through love and in love”
17. “An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”
18. “I do not forget any good deed done to me & I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.”
19. “Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.”
20. “When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”
21. “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 Quotes About The Meaning of Life
22. “Fear makes come true that which one is afraid of.”
23. “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.”
24. “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”
25. “Human potential at its best is to transform a tragedy into a personal triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.”
26. “Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning”
27. “Once an individual’s search for a meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering.”
28. “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.”
29. “We 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.”
30. “Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths.”
31. “What is to give light must endure burning.”
32. “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.”
Thought-Provoking Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
33. “If there is 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.”
34. “Individuality can only be valuable when it is not individuality for its own sake but individuality for the human community.”
35. “Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them.”
36. “It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.”
37. “There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose”
38. “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.”
39. “Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn.”
40. “No one has the right to do wrong, even if wrong has been done to them.”
41. “A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.”
Viktor E. Frankl Quotes To Live By
42. “Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his 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.”
43. “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.”
44. “Pleasure in itself cannot give our existence meaning; thus the lack of pleasure cannot take away meaning from life,”
45. “Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.”
46. “The point is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.”
47. “Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.”
48. “In his creative work the artist is dependent on sources and resources deriving from the spiritual unconscious.”
49. “For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.”
50. “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.”
51. “It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.”
52. “As for the concept of collective guilt, I personally think that it is totally unjustified to hold one person responsible for the behavior of another person or a collective of persons.”
53. “The immediate influence of behavior is always more effective than that of words.”
54. “Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.”
55. “Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”
56. “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.”
57. “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.”
58. “Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.”
59. “No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.”
60. “The pleasure principle is an artificial creation of psychology. Pleasure is not the goal of our aspirations, but the consequence of attaining them.”