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. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her own life.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLMan’s last freedom is his freedom to choose how he will react in any given situation
More Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
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I do not forget any good deed done to me & I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.
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Everywhere man is confronted with fate , with a chance of achieving something through his own suffering.
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Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.
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We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: 1. by doing a deed; 2. by experiencing a value; and 3. by suffering.
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A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.
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If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.
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We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life.
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View life as a series of movie frames, the ending and meaning may not be apparent until the very end of the movie, and yet, each of the hundreds of individual frames has meaning within the context of the whole movie.
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It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.
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You don’t create your mission in life – you detect it.
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Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved.
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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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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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These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning in life in a general way.
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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.
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A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes-within the limits of endowment and environment-he has made out of himself.
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I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.
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As the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
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Life requires of man spiritual elasticity, so that he may temper his efforts to the chances that are offered.
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Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.
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At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.
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No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.
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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.
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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.
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Man’s last freedom is his freedom to choose how he will react in any given situation
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It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL