As 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. FRANKLDespair is suffering without meaning.
More Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
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When we are not any lengthier capable to alter a predicament, we’re challenged to alter ourselves
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A human being is a deciding being.
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A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.
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The last freedom is choosing your attitude.
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The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing
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The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.
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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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Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them.
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These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning in life in a general way.
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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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As such, I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.
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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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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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If we take a man as he is, we make him worse, but if we take man as he should be we make him capable of becoming what he can be.
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The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected.
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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.
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Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.
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It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.
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Nothing is likely to help a person overcome or endure troubles than the consciousness of having a task in life.
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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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If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.
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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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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!
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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.
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Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn.
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It isn’t the past which holds us back, it’s the future; and how we undermine it, today.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL