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Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Viktor E. Frankl

It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Condition Meaning Men Search
Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Determined Giving Men
No one can take from us the ability to choose our attitudes toward the circumstances in which we find ourselves. This is the last of human freedoms.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Attitude Circumstances Lasts
The last freedom is choosing your attitude.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Attitude Choosing Lasts
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
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
What 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. FRANKL

Attitude Learning Life
The salvation of man is through love and in love.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Life Love Men
Man can only find meaning for his existence in something outside himself.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Existence Find Men
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Afford Lying Men Opportunity Situation
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Envy Past Possibility Reality Suffering
The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Away Choose One Thing Way
Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Detect Gains Men Pain
Once an individual’s search for meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Giving Successful Suffering
A man who could not see the end of his”provisional existence” was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Able Goal Men
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
You don’t create your mission in life – you detect it.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Journey Life Missions
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
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Change Happiness Life
But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Courage Grief Men
Now, it is my contention that the deneuroticization of humanity requires a rehumanization of psychotherapy.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Existential Humanity Psychotherapy
But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look then was more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Frank Image Mind Real Wife
I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run- in the long run, I say! – success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Long Running Thinking
In his creative work the artist is dependent on sources and resources deriving from the spiritual unconscious.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Artist Creative Spiritual
One can choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Attitude Freedom Positive Thinking
Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Chance Life Second Time
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Becoming Men Should

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

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Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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