Viktor E. Frankl Quotes - Page 2

Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

Either belief in God is unconditional or it is no belief at all.

I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.

Life asks of every individual a contribution, and it is up to that individual to discover what it should be

The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing

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.

View your life from your funeral, looking back at your life experiences, what have you accomplished? What would you have wanted to accomplish but didn't? What were the happy moments? What were the sad? What would you do again, and what you wouldn't

Suffering presents us with a challenge: to find our goals and purpose in our lives that make even the worst situation worth living through.

It isn't the past which holds us back, it's the future; and how we undermine it, today.

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.

Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in its spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

Don't aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. 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. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. 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.

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.

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

Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.

Humor was another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation.

Success is total self-acceptance.

For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being until he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.

The point is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.

Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how."

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.