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Viktor E. Frankl Quotes | Quotes said by Viktor E. Frankl

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #1

    ...the story of the young woman whose death I witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story. There is little to tell and it may sound as if I had invented it; but to me it seems like a poem. This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard, she told me. In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously. Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness. Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. I often talk to this tree, she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. Yes. What did it say to her? She answered, It said to me, 'I am here-I am here-I am life, eternal life.


  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #2

    /.../, for unnecessary suffering is masochistic rather than heroic.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #3

    /.../happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #4

    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 Quote #5

    A man who could not see the end of hisprovisional existence was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #6

    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 Quote #7

    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 a 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 human is through love and in love.

    I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for the brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way-an honorable way-in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.

    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.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #8

    As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he 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. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #9

    As long as a self is driven by an id to a Thou, it is not a matter of love, either. In love the self is not driven by the id, but rather the self chooses the Thou.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #10

    As to the causation, of the feeling of meaningless, one may say, albeit in an oversimplifying way, that people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #11

    At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal's behavior is embedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people tell him to do (totalitarianism).

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #12

    Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #13

    Bir insanin aci çekmesi, bos bir odadaki gazin davranisina benzer. Bos bir odaya belli miktarda gaz verildigi zaman, oda ne kadar büyük olursa olsun, gaz odanin tamamina yayilir. Dolayisiyla insanin çektigi acinin ‘büyüklügü’ kesinlikle görecelidir.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #14

    But today’s society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual’s value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler’s program, that is to say, ‘mercy’ killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer. Confounding the dignity of man with mere usefulness arises from conceptual confusion that in turn may be traced back to the contemporary nihilism transmitted on many an academic campus and many an analytical couch.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #15

    By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic the self-transcendence of human existence. It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself--be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #16

    Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #17

    Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #18

    Each of us has his own inner concentration camp... We must deal with, with forgiveness and patience-as full human beings, as we are and what we will become.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #19

    Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #20

    Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #21

    Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #22

    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 Quote #23

    Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #24

    Fear may come true that which one is afraid of.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #25

    For as soon as we have used an opportunity and have actualized a potential meaning, we have done so once and for all. We have rescued it into the past/.../, wherein nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #26

    For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #27

    Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #28

    Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him-mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.

    Dostoevski said once, There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.

    These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement.

    It is this spiritual freedom- which cannot be taken away- that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #29

    Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.

  • Viktor E. Frankl Quote #30

    I do not forget any good deed done to me & I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.

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