“When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

Last update July 26, 2025. History

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Viktor E. Frankl 64

Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust surviv… 1905–1997

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“Finally, the benefits of knowing thyself are —You won’t be clouded by the love of life, flatterers can’t arouse your mind, good/bad will appear to be the same before your eyes, pleasure and pain will lose their meanings, the sense of sins and death will vanish away and you will end up having the sense of immortality.”

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“He had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be near to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid.”

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“A size zero? I've never heard of that. That didn't exist when I was growing up. When did that start? What does it mean? It means a person is not there, no? It makes no sense.”

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“In plain, what passes for a curriculum in today's schools is little else than a strategy of distraction… It is largely defined to keep students from knowing themselves and their environment in any realistic sense”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Context: In plain, what passes for a curriculum in today's schools is little else than a strategy of distraction... It is largely defined to keep students from knowing themselves and their environment in any realistic sense; which is to say, it does not allow inquiry into most of the critical problems that comprise the content of the world outside the school (... one of the main differences between the "advantaged" student and the "disadvantaged" is that the former has an economic stake in giving his attention to the curriculum while the latter does not. In other words, the only relevance of the curriculum for the "advantaged" student is that, if he does what he is told, there will be a tangible payoff.)