Top 500 Viktor E. Frankl Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “Of course, this was no therapy in the proper sense since, first, his despair was no disease; and second, I could not change his fate; I could not revive his wife. But in that moment I did succeed in changing his attitude toward his unalterable fate inasmuch as from that time on he could at least see a meaning in his suffering.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

302. “We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

303. “The incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading” so that “he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

304. “Suffering is intended to guard man from apathy, from psychic rigor mortis.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

305. “As to the causation, of the feeling of meaningless, one may say, albeit in an oversimplifying way, that people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

306. “This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives a meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work as much as it does on human love. When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

307. “Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

308. “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.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

309. “He describes poignantly those prisoners who gave up on life, who had lost all hope for a future and were inevitably the first to die. They died less from lack of food or medicine than from lack of hope, lack of something to live for. By contrast, Frankl kept himself alive and kept hope alive by summoning up thoughts of his wife and the prospect of seeing her again, and by dreaming at one point of lecturing after the war about the psychological lessons to be learned from the Auschwitz experience.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

310. “Life is not something, it is the opportunity for something!”

— Viktor E. Frankl

311. “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

312. “In contrast to most of the existentialist schools of thought, logotherapy is in no way pessimistic; but it is realistic in that it faces the tragic triad of human existence: pain, death, and guilt.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

313. “How beautiful the world could be!”

— Viktor E. Frankl

314. “In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

315. “I know that without the suffering, the growth that I have achieved would have been impossible.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

316. “I said that someone looks down on each of us in difficult hours – a friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or a God – and he would not expect us to disappoint him. He would hope to find us suffering proudly – not miserably – knowing how to die.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

317. “At that moment there was very little I knew of myself or of the world – I had but one sentence in mind – always the same: “I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space.” How long I knelt there and repeated this sentence memory can no longer recall. But I know that on that day, in that hour, my new life started. Step for step I progressed, until I again became a human being.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

318. “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.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

319. “People tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

320. “Meaning must be found and cannot be given.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

321. “It was Kierkegaard who told the wise parable that the door to happiness always opens ‘outwards’, which means it closes itself precisely against the person who tries to push the door to happiness ‘inwards’, so to speak.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

322. “We give life meaning not only through our actions but also through loving and, finally, through suffering. Because how human beings deal with the limitation of their possibilities regarding how it affects their actions and their ability to love, how they behave under these restrictions – the way in which they accept their suffering under such restrictions – in all of this they still remain capable of fulfilling human values.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

323. “As long as a man is still motivated either by the fear of punishment or by the hope of reward – or, for that matter, by the wish to appease the superego – conscience has not had its say as yet.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

324. “As for the actual causation of neuroses, apart from constitutional elements, whether somatic or psychic in nature, such feedback mechanisms as anticipatory anxiety seem to be a major pathogenic factor. A given symptom is responded to by a phobia, the phobia triggers the symptom, and the symptom, in turn, reinforces the phobia.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

325. “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.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

326. “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. Only very few realized that. Shamefacedly some confessed occasionally that they had wept, like the comrade who answered my question of how he had gotten over his edema, by confessing, “I have wept it out of my system.” The.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

327. “A thought transfixed me: 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 the 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.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

328. “The man, whose self-esteem had always depended on the respect of others, is emotionally destroyed.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

329. “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

330. “There was plenty of suffering for us to get through. Therefore, it was necessary to face up to the full amount of suffering, trying to keep moments of weakness and furtive tears to a minimum. 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. Only very few realized that.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

331. “The neurotic who learns to laugh at himself may be on the way to self-management, perhaps to cure.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

332. “Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a “secondary rationalization” of instinctual drives.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

333. “Nietzsche: “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.” He.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

334. “There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

335. “As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps – concentration camps, that is – and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

336. “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

337. “We also do not judge the life history of a particular person by the number of pages in the book that portrays it but only by the richness of the content it contains.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

338. “It must be kept in mind, however, that optimism is not anything to be commanded or ordered. One cannot even force oneself to be optimistic indiscriminately, against all odds, against all hope. And what is true for hope is also true for the other two components of the triad inasmuch as faith and love cannot be commanded or ordered either.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

339. “With the end of uncertainty there came the uncertainty of the end.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

340. “One may howl with the wolves, if need be, but when doing so, one should be, I would urge, a sheep in wolf’s clothing.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

341. “Frankl wondered whether “there may be such a thing as autobibliotherapy – healing through reading.” Frankl’s.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

342. “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.’ Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

343. “A sound philosophy of life, I think, may be the most valuable asset for a psychiatrist to have when he is treating a patient.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

344. “An American woman once confronted me with the reproach, “How can you still write some of your books in German, Adolf Hitler’s language?” In response, I asked her if she had knives in her kitchen, and when she answered that she did, I acted dismayed and shocked, exclaiming, “How can you still use knives after so many killers have used them to stab and murder their victims?”

— Viktor E. Frankl

345. “The kind of lesson I had in spotting propaganda has long since dropped off the school curriculum. Yet it seems the time has again come when simple truths and basic human values need defending against the dangerous tides of hatred-spewing propagandists. Is it time again to bring back civics – lessons in speaking up, being a responsible citizen, and spotting today’s Big Lies?”

— Viktor E. Frankl

346. “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.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

347. “My interest does not lie in raising parrots that just rehash “their master’s voice,” but rather in passing the torch to “independent and inventive, innovative and creative spirits.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

348. “Tension is not something to be avoided indiscriminately. Man does not need homeostasis at any cost, but rather a sound amount of tension such as that which is aroused by the demanding quality inherent in the meaning for human existence.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

349. “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. Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

350. “Earlier, I mentioned art. Is there such a thing in a concentration camp? It rather depends on what one chooses to call art.”

— Viktor E. Frankl