Viktor E. Frankl Quotes

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

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

When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.

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. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her own life.

When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but 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.

Decisions, not conditions, determine what a man is.

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

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.

I never would have made it if I could not have laughed. It lifted me momentarily out of this horrible situation, just enough to make it livable.

Happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy - it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself.

Success, like happiness, is the unexpected side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.

The one thing you can't take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.

The meaning of my life is to help others find meaning in theirs.

This is the core of the human spirit ... If we can find something to live for - if we can find some meaning to put at the center of our lives - even the worst kind of suffering becomes bearable.

Our greatest human freedom is that, despite whatever our physical situation is in life, WE ARE ALWAYS FREE TO CHOOSE OUR THOUGHTS!

What is to give light must endure burning.

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.

Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.

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

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.

You don't create your mission in life - you detect it.

It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead 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. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

Despair is suffering without meaning.

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