Top 500 Viktor E. Frankl Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “The last of human freedoms – the ability to chose one’s attitude especially an attitude of gratitude in a given set of circumstances especially in difficult circumstances.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

52. “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

53. “There are only two races, the decent and the indecent.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

54. “I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

55. “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

56. “Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a “secondary rationalization” of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

57. “Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

58. “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

59. “For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

60. “It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

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

— Viktor E. Frankl

62. “You don’t create your mission in life – you detect it.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

63. “At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

64. “The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

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

— Viktor E. Frankl

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

— Viktor E. Frankl

67. “Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

68. “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

69. “Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

70. “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

71. “A human being is a deciding being.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

72. “Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

73. “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.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

74. “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.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

75. “And I quoted from Nietzsche: That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

76. “Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

77. “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.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

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

— Viktor E. Frankl

79. “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

80. “It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

81. “Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

82. “The more one forgets one’s own self, the more human the person becomes.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

83. “It is always important to have something yet to do in life.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

84. “Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

85. “Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

86. “It is the pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

87. “As the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

88. “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

89. “I do the unpleasant tasks before I do the pleasant ones.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

90. “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

91. “Man’s inner strength may raise him above his outward fate.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

92. “It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

93. “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

94. “The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

95. “Man can only find meaning for his existence in something outside himself.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

96. “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

97. “Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with a chance of achieving something through his own suffering.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

98. “The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

99. “He who knows the ‘Why’ for his existence is able to bear almost any ‘How’.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

100. “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 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.”

— Viktor E. Frankl