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Viktor E. Frankl: 128 quotes178 likes

“If 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.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984), p. 67 in the 1959 Beacon Press edition

“Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them.”

Viktor E. Frankl

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

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

“That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.”

Viktor E. Frankl

“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.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984), p. 126 in the 1984 Pocket Books edition

“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.”

Viktor E. Frankl

Source: Man's Search For Meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust

“In his creative work the artist is dependent on sources and resources deriving from the spiritual unconscious.”

Viktor E. Frankl

Source: Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning

“At such a moment, it is not the physical pain which hurts the most (and this applies to adults as much as to punished children); it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

“The incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading" so that "he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy.”

Viktor E. Frankl

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

“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.”

Viktor E. Frankl

“It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

“Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

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

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Postscript 1984 : The Case for a Tragic Optimism, based on a lecture at the Third World Congress of Logotherapy, Regensburg University (19 June 1983)
Variant: So, let us be alert in a twofold sense: Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
Source: Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)
Context: You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to "saints." Wouldn't it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.
So, let us be alert — alert in a twofold sense:
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

“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.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

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

Viktor E. Frankl

“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!”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

“But we cannot “give” meaning to the life of others. And if this is true of meaning per se, how much does it hold for Ultimate Meaning?”

Viktor E. Frankl

Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning (1997)
Context: It is true, Logotherapy, deals with the Logos; it deals with Meaning. Specifically I see Logotherapy in helping others to see meaning in life. But we cannot “give” meaning to the life of others. And if this is true of meaning per se, how much does it hold for Ultimate Meaning?