Once an individual’s search for meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering
VIKTOR E. FRANKLThe quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing
More Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
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The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.
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Thus, human existence-at least as long as it has not been neurotically distorted-is always directed to something, or someone, other than itself, be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter lovingly.
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It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.
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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.
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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.
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It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.
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There are only two races, the decent and the indecent.
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…to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life-daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.
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When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.
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In his creative work the artist is dependent on sources and resources deriving from the spiritual unconscious.
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This is the core of the human spirit … If we can find something to live for – if we can find some meaning to put at the center of our lives – even the worst kind of suffering becomes bearable.
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What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.
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We cannot, after all, judge a biography by its length, by the number of pages in it; we must judge by the richness of the contents…Sometimes the ‘unfinisheds’ are among the most beautiful symphonies.
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Our greatest human freedom is that, despite whatever our physical situation is in life, WE ARE ALWAYS FREE TO CHOOSE OUR THOUGHTS!
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Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.
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It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.
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Now, it is my contention that the deneuroticization of humanity requires a rehumanization of psychotherapy.
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What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.
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The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected.
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The last of human freedoms – the ability to chose one’s attitude especially an attitude of gratitude in a given set of circumstances especially in difficult circumstances.
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One can choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.
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Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
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Sleep [is like] a dove which has landed near one’s hand and stays there as long as one does not pay any attention to it.
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If there is 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. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
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It is always important to have something yet to do in life.
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A human being is a deciding being.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL