Viktor E. Frankl: Man

Viktor E. Frankl was Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor. Explore interesting quotes on man.
Viktor E. Frankl: 128 quotes178 likes

“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.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

“The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)
Context: The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. 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.

“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, 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 book Man's Search for Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)
Context: 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, 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. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. … For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."

“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.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)

“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.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

“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 book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

“The salvation of man is through love and in love.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)
Context: 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, 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. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. … For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."

“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.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

“What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

“The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear anymore—except his God.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

“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

“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.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)

“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 book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

“I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.”

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.

“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