Top 500 Viktor E. Frankl Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 8 of 10

351. “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

352. “This was enough to incapacitate the patient for the peak experience of sexual pleasure, since the orgasm was made an object of intention, and an object of attention as well, instead of remaining an unintended effect of unreflected dedication and surrender to the partner.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

353. “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

354. “Whereupon I react by reporting that in the first place I do not at all see in the bestseller status of my book an achievement and accomplishment on my part but rather an expression of the misery of our time: of hundreds of thousands of people reach out firma book whose very title promises to deal with the questions of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

355. “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

356. “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 in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

357. “To achieve personal meaning, he says, one must transcend subjective pleasures by doing something that “points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself... by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to loved.“.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

358. “To be sure, man’s search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

359. “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

360. “Logos is a Greek word which denotes “meaning”.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

361. “Lessing who once said, “There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

362. “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.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

363. “They must not lose hope but should keep their courage in the certainty that the hopelessness of our struggle did not detract from its dignity and its meaning.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

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

365. “Man is that being which invented the gas chambers; but he is at the same time that being which walked with head held high into these very same gas chambers, the Lord’s Prayer or the Jewish prayer for the dead on his lips.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

366. “To attempt a methodical presentation of the subject is very difficult, as psychology requires a certain scientific detachment. But does a man who makes his observations while he himself is a prisoner possess the necessary detachment? Such detachment is granted to the outsider, but he is too far removed to make any statements of real value.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

367. “Tilly must have been among them.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

368. “Gordon W. Allport’s book, The Individual and His Religion: “The neurotic who learns to laugh at himself may be on the way to self-management, perhaps to cure.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

369. “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

370. “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. Dostoevski said once, ‘There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

371. “It can be said that they were worthy of 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

372. “During psychoanalysis, the patient must lie down on a couch and tell you things which sometimes are very disagreeable to tell.” Whereupon I immediately retorted with the following improvisation: “Now, in logotherapy the patient may remain sitting erect but he must hear things which sometimes are very disagreeable to hear.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

373. “Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that 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.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

374. “In qualche modo, la sofferenza cessa di essere tale nel momento in cui trova un significato, come il significato di un sacrificio.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

375. “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.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

376. “Nadie es conocedor de la esencia de otro ser humano si no lo ama.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

377. “But the whole of life stands in the face of death, and if this man had been right then all our lives would be meaningless, were we only to strive for pleasure and nothing else – preferably the most pleasure and the highest degree of pleasure possible. Pleasure in itself cannot give our existence meaning; thus the lack of pleasure cannot take away meaning from life, which already seems obvious to us.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

378. “Just consider the mass neurotic syndrome so pervasive in the young generation: there is ample empirical evidence that the three facets of this syndrome – depression, aggression, addiction – are due to what is called in logotherapy “the existential vacuum,” a feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

379. “Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental well-being. We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging man with a potential meaning for him to fulfill.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

380. “All psychotherapy is ultimately something of an art. There is always an irrational element in psychotherapy. The doctor’s artistic intuition and sensitivity is of considerable importance. The patient, too, brings an irrational element into the relationship: his individuality.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

381. “In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

382. “More and more, a psychiatrist is approached today by patients who confront him with human problems, rather than neurotic symptoms. Some of the people who nowadays call upon a psychiatrist would have seen a pastor, priest, or rabbi in former days. Now they often refuse to be handed over to a clergyman, and instead confront the doctor with questions such as: “What is the meaning of my life?“.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

383. “I know that without the suffering, the growth that I have achieved would have been impossible.” Is this to say that suffering is indispensable to the discovery of meaning? In no way. I only insist that meaning is available in spite of – nay, even through – suffering, provided, as noted in Part Two of this book, that the suffering is unavoidable. If it is avoidable, the meaningful thing to do is to remove its cause, for unnecessary suffering is masochistic rather than heroic.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

384. “The choices humans make should be active rather than passive.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

385. “And if there is a fundamental difference between the way people perceived the world around them in the past and the way they perceive it at present, then it is perhaps best identified as follows: in the past, activism was coupled with optimism, while today activism requires pessimism.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

386. “It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future – sub specie aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

387. “Nothing can be undone, and nothing can be done away with. I should say having been is the surest kind of being.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

388. “Tenemos que dejar de hacernos preguntas sobre el significado de la vida y, en vez de ello, pensar en nosotros como en seres a quienes la vida les inquiriera continua e incesantemente.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

389. “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. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not. Do.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

390. “Whether a life is fulfilled does not depend on how great one’s radius of action is, but rather only on whether the circle is fully filled out.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

391. “If all men were perfect, then every individual would be replaceable by anyone else. From the very imperfection of men follows the indispensability and inexchangeability of each individual; for each is imperfect in his own fashion.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

392. “A statement once made by Edith Weisskopf-Joelson: “Although traditional psychotherapy has insisted that therapeutic practices have to be based on findings on etiology, it is possible that certain factors might cause neuroses during early childhood and that entirely different factors might relieve neuroses during adulthood.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

393. “A human being, it is true, is a finite being. However, to the extent to which he understands his finiteness, he also overcomes it.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

394. “Disgust, horror and pity are emotions that our spectator could not really feel anymore. The sufferers, the dying and the dead, became such common place sights to him after a few weeks of camp life that they could not move him anymore.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

395. “To put it figuratively, the role played by a logotherapist is that of an eye specialist rather than that of a painter. A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it; an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is. The logotherapist’s role consists of widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of potential meaning becomes conscious and visible to him.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

396. “You are responsible for overcoming guilt by rising above it, by growing beyond yourselves, by changing for the better.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

397. “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. 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.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

398. “To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: “Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?” There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one’s opponent.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

399. “Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions. Our.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

400. “You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to “saints.” Wouldn’t it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.”

— Viktor E. Frankl