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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.

Viktor E. Frankl

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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Death Fate Life Meaning Suffering
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Meaningful Purposeful Something Struggle
You don’t create your mission in life – you detect it.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Journey Life Missions
Ultimately, we are not subject to the conditions that confront us; rather, these conditions are subject to our decision … we must decide whether we will face up or give in, whether or not we will let ourselves be determined by the conditions.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Condition Confront Decision Faces Giving
As such, I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Bears Men Neurology
One should not search for an abstract meaning of life … Life can be made meaningful in a threefold way: first, through what we give to life … second, by what we take from the world … third, through the stand we take toward a fate we no longer can change.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Fate Giving Meaningful
Man’s last freedom is his freedom to choose how he will react in any given situation
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Given Last Men
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Country Lectures Ministry Ultimately
Just as a small fire is extinguished by the storm whereas a large fire is enhanced by it – likewise a weak faith is weakened by predicament and catastrophes whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Famous Fire Inspirational Strong
It said to me, ‘I am here — I am here — I am life, eternal life.’
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Eternal Life Said
Despair is suffering without meaning.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Despair Existential Suffering
What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Bears Men Philosophers
Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Meaning Men Search World
It is the pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Happiness Pursuit Thwart
You 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!
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Children Clothes Wife
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Encounters Existential Human Long

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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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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