Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLI recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.
More Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
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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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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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Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.
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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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The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing
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One can choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.
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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.
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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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Life requires of man spiritual elasticity, so that he may temper his efforts to the chances that are offered.
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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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But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look then was more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
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It said to me, ‘I am here — I am here — I am life, eternal life.’
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Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
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The struggle for existence is a struggle ‘for’ something; it is purposeful and only in so being is it meaningful and able to bring meaning into life.
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It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL