black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

It is the pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Happiness Pursuit Thwart
Now, it is my contention that the deneuroticization of humanity requires a rehumanization of psychotherapy.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Existential Humanity Psychotherapy
…to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life-daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Answers Meditation Thinking
If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Life Man Meaning Search Suffering
Ultimately, 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. FRANKL

Challenges Life Meaning Men
A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Despair Disease Mean Men
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
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
We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: 1. by doing a deed; 2. by experiencing a value; and 3. by suffering.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Different Life Suffering
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

Actualization Causes Giving Self
The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Boredom Existential Vacuum
It is true that we can see the therapist as a technician only if we have first viewed the patient as some sort of machine.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Firsts Machine Patient
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
God is the partner of your most intimate soliloquies
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Intimate Partners Solliloquies
It isn’t the past which holds us back, it’s the future; and how we undermine it, today.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Future Past Today Undermine
There are only two races, the decent and the indecent.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Decent Race Two

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!

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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!

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Viktor E. Frankl Quotes