Viktor E. Frankl Quotes & Sayings

A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering had no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and more intensely. — Viktor E. Frankl

Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose. — Viktor E. Frankl

To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative. — Viktor E. Frankl

they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. And — Viktor E. Frankl

I do not forget any good deed done to me & I do not carry a grudge for a bad one. — Viktor E. Frankl

Research work done on unemployed miners has shown that they suffer from a peculiar sort of deformed time - inner time - which is a result of their unemployed state. — Viktor E. Frankl

And I quoted from Nietzsche: That which does not kill me, makes me stronger. — Viktor E. Frankl

Whenever the degraded majority and the promoted minority came into conflict (and there were plenty of opportunities for this, starting with the distribution of food) the results were explosive. — Viktor E. Frankl

In a different connection, we have already spoken of the tendency there was to look into the past, to help make the present, with all its horrors, less real. But in robbing the present of its reality there lay a certain danger. It became easy to overlook the opportunities to make something positive of camp life, opportunities which really did exist. — Viktor E. Frankl

Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already. — Viktor E. Frankl

If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal value. He thought of himself then as only a part of an enormous mass of people; his existence descended to the level of animal life. — Viktor E. Frankl

The meaning of life is to give life meaning. — Viktor E. Frankl

For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment. — Viktor E. Frankl

The perception of meaning, as I see it, more specifically boils down to becoming aware of a possibility against the background of reality or, to express it in plain words, to becoming aware of what can be done about a given situation. — Viktor E. Frankl

Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment. — Viktor E. Frankl

Mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate between the two extremities of distress and boredom." ~Schopenhauer. In actual fact, boredom is now causing more problems to solve that distress. And these problems are growing increasingly crucial, for progressive automation will probably lead to an enormous increase in the leisure hours available to the average worker. The pity of it is that many of these will not know what to do with all their newly acquired free time. — Viktor E. Frankl

know that without the suffering, the growth that I have achieved would have been impossible." Is — Viktor E. Frankl

Now, it is my contention that the deneuroticization of humanity requires a rehumanization of psychotherapy. — Viktor E. Frankl

We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation - just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer - we are challenged to change ourselves. Let — Viktor E. Frankl

But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to "be happy." Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. — Viktor E. Frankl

There is a danger inherent in the teaching of man's "nothingbutness," the theory that man is nothing but the result of biological, psychological and sociological conditions, or the product of heredity and environment. Such a view of man makes a neurotic believe what he is prone to believe anyway, namely, that he is the pawn and victim of outer influences or inner circumstances. This neurotic fatalism is fostered and strengthened by a psychotherapy which denies that man is free. — Viktor E. Frankl

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. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions. — Viktor E. Frankl

there are various masks and guises under which the existential vacuum appears. Sometimes the frustrated will to meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, including the most primitive form of the will to power, the will to money. In other cases, the place of frustrated will to meaning is taken by the will to pleasure. That is why existential frustration often eventuates in sexual compensation. We can observe in such cases that the sexual libido becomes rampant in the existential vacuum. — Viktor E. Frankl

Even when it is not fully attained, we become better by striving for a higher goal. — Viktor E. Frankl

Shortly before the United States entered World War II, I received an invitation to come to the American Consulate in Vienna to pick up my immigration visa. My old parents were overjoyed because they expected that I would soon be allowed to leave Austria. I suddenly hesitated, however. The question beset me: could I really afford to leave my parents alone to face their fate, to be sent, sooner or later, to a concentration camp, or even to a so-called extermination camp? Where did my responsibility lie? Should I foster my brain child, logotherapy, by emigrating to fertile soil where I could write my books? Or should I concentrate on my duties as a real child, the child of my parents who had to do whatever he could to protect them? — Viktor E. Frankl

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

Nietzsche's words, "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how," could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic efforts regarding prisoners. Whenever there was an opportunity for it, one had to give them a why - an aim - for their lives, in order to strengthen them to bear the terrible how of their existence. — Viktor E. Frankl

He was drowning in depression and contemplating suicide. One day a friend noticed that his outlook had changed to hopeful serenity. The soldier attributed his transformation to reading Man's Search for Meaning. When he was told about the soldier, Frankl wondered whether "there may be such a thing as autobibliotherapy - healing through reading. — Viktor E. Frankl

I would say that our patients never really despair because of any suffering in itself! Instead, their despair stems in each instance from a doubt as to whether suffering is meaningful. Man is ready and willing to shoulder any suffering as soon and as long as he can see a meaning in it. — Viktor E. Frankl

A man's suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. — Viktor E. Frankl

Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one's belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one's right to believe, and obey, his own conscience. — Viktor E. Frankl

Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it. — Viktor E. Frankl

One evening, when we were already resting on the floor of our hut, dead tired, soup bowls in hand, a fellow prisoner rushed in and asked us to run out to the assembly grounds and see the wonderful sunset. Standing outside we saw sinister clouds glowing in the west and the whole sky alive with clouds of ever-changing shapes and colors, from steel blue to blood red. The desolate grey mud huts provided a sharp contrast, while the puddles on the muddy ground reflected the glowing sky. Then, after minutes of moving silence, one prisoner said to another, How beautiful the world could be ... — Viktor E. Frankl

Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain (they were often of a delicate constitution), but the damage to their inner selves was less. They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom. Only in this way can one explain the apparent paradox that some prisoners of a less hardy make-up often seemed to survive camp life better than did those of a robust nature. — Viktor E. Frankl

The meaning of my life is to help others find meaning in theirs. — Viktor E. Frankl

We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life. — Viktor E. Frankl

Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. "Life" does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life's tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man's destiny, which is different and unique for each individual. No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response. — Viktor E. Frankl

A human being is a deciding being. — Viktor E. Frankl

Once the meaning of suffering had been revealed to us, we refused to minimize or alleviate the camp's tortures by ignoring them or harboring false illusions and entertaining artificial optimism. Suffering had become a task on which we did not want to turn our backs. We had realized its hidden opportunities for achievement, the opportunities which caused the poet Rilke to write, "Wie viel ist aufzuleiden!" (How much suffering there is to get through!). — Viktor E. Frankl

Fear makes come true that which one is afraid of. — Viktor E. Frankl

Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. In a similar sense suffering is not always a pathological phenomenon; rather than being a symptom of neurosis, suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if the suffering grows out of existential frustration ... Existential frustration is neither pathological or pathogenic. — Viktor E. Frankl

To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.' — Viktor E. Frankl

Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of the their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom - which cannot be taken away - that makes life meaningful and purposeful. — Viktor E. Frankl

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

Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose. — Viktor E. Frankl

Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times. — Viktor E. Frankl

Logotherapy sees the human patient in all his humanness. I step up to the core of the patient's being. And that is a being in search of meaning, a being that is transcending himself, a being capable of acting in love for others. — Viktor E. Frankl

If one cannot change a situation that causes his suffering, he can still choose his attitude. — Viktor E. Frankl

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

From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two - the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of "pure race" - and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards. — Viktor E. Frankl

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. — Viktor E. Frankl

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

Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for. — Viktor E. Frankl

Thus far we have shown that the meaning of life always changes, but that it never ceases to be. According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. — Viktor E. Frankl

No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same. — Viktor E. Frankl

It is we ourselves who must answer the questions that life asks of us, and to those questions we can respond only by being responsible for our existence. — Viktor E. Frankl

if a book has one passage, one idea with the power to change a person's life, that alone justifies reading it, rereading it, and finding room for it on one's shelves. — Viktor E. Frankl

Every age has its own collective neurosis, and every age needs its own psychotherapy to cope with it. — Viktor E. Frankl

Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him - mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. — Viktor E. Frankl

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

The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. — Viktor E. Frankl

How sorry I was for that fellow and how glad not to be in his skin at that moment, but instead to be sick and able to doze on in the sick quarters! What a lifesaver it was to have two days there, and perhaps even two extra days after those! All — Viktor E. Frankl

If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete. — Viktor E. Frankl

View life as a series of movie frames, the ending and meaning may not be apparent until the very end of the movie, and yet, each of the hundreds of individual frames has meaning within the context of the whole movie. — Viktor E. Frankl

George, you must realize that the world is a joke. There is no justice, everything is random. Only when you realize this will you understand how silly it is to take yourself seriously. There is no grand purpose in the universe. It just is. There's no particular meaning in what decision you make today about how to act. — Viktor E. Frankl

The innermost core of the patient's personality is not even touched by a psychosis.
An incurably psychotic individual may lose his usefulness but yet retain the dignity of a human being. This is my psychiatric credo.
Without it I should not think it worthwhile to be a psychiatrist.
For whose sake? Just for the sake of a damaged brain machine which cannot be repaired? If the patient were not definitely more, euthanasia would be justified. — Viktor E. Frankl

Decisions, not conditions, determine what a man is. — Viktor E. Frankl

There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." I can see in these words a motto which holds true for any psychotherapy. In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive. — Viktor E. Frankl

God is the partner of your most intimate soliloquies — Viktor E. Frankl

Since Auschwitz, we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima, we know what is at stake. — Viktor E. Frankl

For as soon as we have used an opportunity and have actualized a potential meaning, we have done so once and for all. We have rescued it into the past/ ... /, wherein nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured. — Viktor E. Frankl

If hundreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails. — Viktor E. Frankl

Pain is only bearable if we know it will end, not if we deny it exists. — Viktor E. Frankl

If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load that is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. So, if therapists wish to foster their patients' mental health, they should not be afraid to increase that load through a reorientation toward the meaning of one's life. — Viktor E. Frankl

I believe that my handicap will only enhance my ability to help others. I know that without the suffering, the growth that I have achieved would have been impossible. — Viktor E. Frankl

I think it was Lessing who once said, 'There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose'. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour. — Viktor E. Frankl

He yearned for privacy and for solitude. After my transportation to a so-called "rest camp," I had the rare fortune to find solitude for about five minutes at a time. — Viktor E. Frankl

It is not the physical pain which hurts the most (and this applies to adults as much as to punished children); it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all. Strangely — Viktor E. Frankl

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal — Viktor E. Frankl

It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions. — Viktor E. Frankl

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. — Viktor E. Frankl

Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. — Viktor E. Frankl

A man's character became involved to the point that he was caught in a mental turmoil which threatened all the values he held and threw them into doubt. — Viktor E. Frankl

He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? "No, thank you," he will think. "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. — Viktor E. Frankl

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

How can we dare to predict the behavior of man? We may predict the movements of a machine, of an automaton; more than this, we many even try to predict the mechanisms or "dynamisms" of the human psyche as well. But man is more than psyche. — Viktor E. Frankl

Sunday neurosis, that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest. — Viktor E. Frankl

Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself - be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. — Viktor E. Frankl

No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. — Viktor E. Frankl

It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. — Viktor E. Frankl

Apathy, the main symptom of the second phase, was a necessary mechanism of self-defense. Reality dimmed, and all efforts and all emotions were centered on one task: preserving one's own life and that of the other fellow. It was typical to hear the prisoners, while they were being herded back to camp from their work sites in the evening, sigh with relief and say, Well, another day is over. — Viktor E. Frankl

When a person can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure. — Viktor E. Frankl

Now we can understand Schopenhauer when he said that mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate eternally between the two extremes of distress and boredom. — Viktor E. Frankl

There is nothing in this world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is meaning in one's life. — Viktor E. Frankl

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

Each of us carries a unique spark of the divine, and each of us is also an inseparable part of the web of life. — Viktor E. Frankl

Unnecessary suffering is masochistic rather than heroic. — Viktor E. Frankl

For too long a time
for half a century, in fact
psychiatry tried to interpret the human mind merely as a mechanism, and consequently the therapy of mental disease merely in terms of technique. I believe this dream has been dreamt out. What now begins to loom on the horizon is not psychologized medicine but rather those of human psychiatry. — Viktor E. Frankl

Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent. To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative. It — Viktor E. Frankl

I had wanted simply to convey to the reader by way of concrete example that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones. And I thought that if the point were demonstrated in a situation as extreme as that in a concentration camp, my book might gain a hearing. I therefore felt responsible for writing down what I had gone through, for I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair. — Viktor E. Frankl