You don’t create your mission in life – you detect it.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLYou don’t create your mission in life – you detect it.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLWe needed to stop asking about the meaning of life.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLNo man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLI recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLMan’s inner strength may raise him above his outward fate.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLMan 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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLWhat 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. FRANKLWhat 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. FRANKLLive as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLOne can choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLUltimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLIf there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLSleep [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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLIt isn’t the past which holds us back, it’s the future; and how we undermine it, today.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLMost 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. FRANKLAs 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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL