The incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading” so that “he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy.
VIKTOR E. FRANKLIt isn’t the past which holds us back, it’s the future; and how we undermine it, today.
More Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
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It said to me, ‘I am here — I am here — I am life, eternal life.’
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Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.
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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.
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Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.
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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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The salvation of man is through love and in love.
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In his creative work the artist is dependent on sources and resources deriving from the spiritual unconscious.
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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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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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It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
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What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
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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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There are only two races, the decent and the indecent.
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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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The more one forgives himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL