Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLYou can take away my wife, you can take away my children, you can strip me of my clothes and my freedom, but there is one thing no person can ever take away from me – and that is my freedom to choose how I will react to what happens to me!
More Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
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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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Now, it is my contention that the deneuroticization of humanity requires a rehumanization of psychotherapy.
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It is the pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.
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There are only two races, the decent and the indecent.
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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 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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Man ultimately decides for himself! And in the end, education must be education towards the ability to decide
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One can choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.
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Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved.
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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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There are two races of men in this world but only these two: the race of the decent man and the race of the indecent man.
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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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Everywhere man is confronted with fate , with a chance of achieving something through his own suffering.
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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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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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A man who could not see the end of his”provisional existence” was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life.
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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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I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.
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A human being is a deciding being.
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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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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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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.
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The salvation of man is through love and in love.
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Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.
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When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.
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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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL