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Anne Frank Quotes
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110 Quotes Igniting Resilience, Hope, and Timeless Inspiration

Discover the profound wisdom and insight of Anne Frank through her unforgettable quotes. From the power of resilience to the importance of hope, these timeless words will inspire and uplift you.

Annelies Marie Frank was a German-born Jewish girl who gained fame posthumously with the publication of The Diary of a Young Girl. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Anne and her family moved to Amsterdam to escape Nazi persecution. In 1942, they went into hiding in an attic, where Anne kept a diary documenting her life in hiding until their arrest by the Gestapo in 1944.

After their arrest, Anne and her sister Margot were transferred to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where they died a few months later. Anne's father, Otto Frank, returned after the war and discovered her diary had been saved by his secretaries. He decided to fulfill Anne's wish to become a writer and published her diary in 1947. Since then, it has been translated into over 70 languages and remains one of the world's best-known books about the Holocaust.

✵ 12. June 1929 – 1945  •  Other names Anna Franková, Анна Франк
Anne Frank photo
Anne Frank: 110 quotes271 likes

Anne Frank Quotes

“I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, and keep trying to find a way to become what I'd like to be and what I could be if…. if only there were no other people in the world.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“leave me in peace, let me sleep one night at least without my pillow being wet with tears, my eyes burning and my head throbbing”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“In the future I'm going to devote less time to sentimentality and more time to reality.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“This is a photograph of me as I wish I looked all the time. Then I might have a chance of getting in Hollywood.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“A person can be lonely even if he is loved by many people, because he is still not the "One and Only" to anyone.”

Anne Frank

29 December 1943
The Diary of a Young Girl (1942 - 1944)
Variant: You can be lonely even when you're loved by many people, since you're still not anybody's "one and only".
Source: Cliffs Notes on Frank's The Diary of Anne Frank

“It must be awful to feel you're not needed.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“Ordinary people simply don't know what books mean to us, shut up here. Reading, learning, and the radio are our amusements.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“What I condemn are our system of values and the men who don't acknowledge how great, difficult, but ultimately beautiful women's share in society is.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“I am what a romantic movie is to a profound thinker - a mere diversion, a comic interlude, something that is soon forgotten.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“Don't be too assuming, it doesn't get you anywhere.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“Misfortunes never come singly.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“but i've slammed the door to my inner self; if he ever wants to force the lock again, he'll have to use a harder crowbar!”

Anne Frank

“One gets on better in life if one is not over modest.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“Who knows, perhaps he doesn't care about me at all and look at the others in just the same way.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“It is becoming a bad dream-- in the daytime as well as at night. I see him nearly all the time and can't get at him, I mustn't show anything, must remain gay while I'm really in despair.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“I wonder if anyone can ever succeed in making their children content.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“He clings to his solitude, to his affected indifference and his grown-up ways, but it's just an act, so as never, never to show his real feelings.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“I looked up in the sky and trusted in God.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“People can so easily be tempted by slackness… and by money.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“Riches can all be lost, but that happiness in your own heart can only be veiled, and it will bring you happiness again, as long as you live.”

Anne Frank

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“I live in a crazy time.”

Anne Frank

“Be brave! Let's remember our duty and perform it without complaint. There will be a way out. God has never deserted our people. Through the ages Jews have had to suffer, but through the ages they've gone on living, and the centuries of suffering have only made them stronger. The weak shall fall and the strong shall survive and not be defeated!”

Anne Frank

11 April 1944
(1942 - 1944)

“How wonderful it is that no one has to wait, but can start right now to gradually change the world! How wonderful it is that everyone, great and small, can immediately help bring about justice by giving of themselves! […] You can always — always — give something, even if it's a simple act of kindness!”

Anne Frank

"Give!" (26 March 1944)
Variant translation: How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before beginning to improve the world! [...] You can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness!
Tales from the Secret Annex

“A "food cycle" is a period in which we have only one particular dish or type of vegetable to eat. For a long time we ate nothing but endive. Endive with sand -, endive without sand, endive with mashed potatoes, endive-and-mashed potato casserole. Then it was spinach, followed by kohlrabi, salsify, cucumbers, tomatoes, sauerkraut, etc., etc.”

Anne Frank

3 April 1944
The Diary of a Young Girl (1942 - 1944)

“However, during the third class he'd finally had enough. "Anne Frank, as punishment for talking in class, write an essay entitled, Quack, Quack, Quack, Said Mistress Chatterback."”

Anne Frank

Writing a story about a teacher who is scolding her for being talkative in class. Variant translations: Quack, Quack, Quack, Said Miss Quackenbush. / Quack, Quack, Quack, Said Miss Natterbeak.
21 June 1942
(1942 - 1944)

“I trust to luck and do nothing but work, hoping that all will end well.”

Anne Frank

3 February 1944
(1942 - 1944)

“I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.”

Anne Frank

2 January 1944
(1942 - 1944)

“Who would ever think that so much went on in the soul of a young girl?”

Anne Frank

12 January 1944
(1942 - 1944)

“At such moments I don't think about all the misery, but about the beauty that still remains. This is where Mother and I differ greatly. Her advice in the face of melancholy is: "Think about all the suffering in the world and be thankful you're not part of it." My advice is: "Go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer. Go outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself; think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy."”

Anne Frank

Dan denk ik niet aan al de ellende, maar aan het mooie dat nog overblijft. Hierin ligt voor een groot deel het verschil tussen moeder en mij. Haar raad voor zwaarmoedigheid is: "Denk aan al de ellende in de wereld en wees blij, dat jij die niet beleeft!"
Mijn raad is: "Ga naar buiten, naar de velden, de natuur en de zon, ga naar buiten en probeer het geluk in jezelf te hervinden en in God. Denk aan al het mooie dat er in en om jezelf nog overblijft en wees gelukkig!"
7 March 1944
Variant translations:
:Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.
Think of all the beauty that is still left in and around you and be happy!
(1942 - 1944)

“Forgive me, Kitty, they don't call me a bundle of contradictions for nothing!”

Anne Frank

21 July 1944
(1942 - 1944)

“I want to go on living even after my death! And that's why I'm so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that's inside me!”

Anne Frank

5 April 1944
(1942 - 1944)

“Fine specimens of humanity, those Germans, and to think that I am actually one of them!”

Anne Frank

9 October 1942
(1942 - 1944)

“I believe that in the course of the next century the notion that it's a woman's duty to have children will change and make way for the respect and admiration of all women, who bear their burdens without complaint or a lot of pompous words!”

Anne Frank

13 June 1944
(1942 - 1944)

“Is discord going to show itself while we are still fighting, is the Jew once again worth less than another? Oh, it is sad, very sad, that once more, for the umpteenth time, the old truth is confirmed: "What one Christian does is his own responsibility, what one Jew does is thrown back at all Jews."”

Anne Frank

22 May 1944
(1942 - 1944)

“For someone like me, it is a very strange habit to write in a diary. Not only that I have never written before, but it strikes me that later neither I, nor anyone else, will care for the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.”

Anne Frank

20 June 1942
(1942 - 1944)

“We're all alive, but we don't know why or what for; we're all searching for happiness; we're all leading lives that are different and yet the same.”

Anne Frank

6 July 1944
Variant translation: We all live with the objective of being happy, our lives are all different and yet the same.
(1942 - 1944)