Top 500 Viktor E. Frankl Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 8 of 10

351. “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

352. “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

353. “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

354. “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

355. “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

356. “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

357. “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

358. “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

359. “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

360. “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

361. “Edith Weisskopf-Joelson observed in this context that the logotherapeutic “notion that experiencing can be as valuable as achieving is therapeutic because it compensates for our one-sided emphasis on the external world of achievement at the expense of the internal world of experience.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

362. “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

363. “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

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

— Viktor E. Frankl

365. “Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. In a similar sense suffering is not always a pathological phenomenon; rather than being a symptom of neurosis, suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if the suffering grows out of existential frustration.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

366. “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

367. “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

368. “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

369. “As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

370. “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

371. “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

372. “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

373. “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

374. “Insofar as a sacrifice is “calculated,” performed after careful reckoning of the prospects of its bringing about a desired end, it loses all ethical significance. Real sacrifice occurs only when we run the risk of having sacrificed in vein. Would anyone maintain that a person who plunges into the water to save someone has acted less ethically, or unethically, because both are drowned?”

— Viktor E. Frankl

375. “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

376. “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

377. “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

378. “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

379. “I have nothing to expect from life any more.” What sort of answer can one give to that?”

— Viktor E. Frankl

380. “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

381. “El humor es otra de las armas del alma en su lucha por la supervivencia.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

382. “Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

383. “Is there no spiritual freedom in regard to behavior and reaction to any given surroundings? Is that theory true which would have us believe that man is no more than a product of many conditional and environmental factors – be they of a biological, psychological or sociological nature?”

— Viktor E. Frankl

384. “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

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

— Viktor E. Frankl

386. “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

387. “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

388. “By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

389. “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

390. “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. 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.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

391. “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

392. “Which choice will be made an actuality once and forever, an immortal “footprint in the sands of time”? At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

393. “He describes poignantly the prisoners who gave up on life, who had lost all hope for a future and were inevitably the first to die.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

394. “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

395. “A man who let himself decline because he could not see any future goal found himself occupied with retrospective thoughts.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

396. “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

397. “Those who have not gone through a similar experience can hardly conceive of the soul-destroying mental conflict and clashes of will power which a famished man experiences.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

398. “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

399. “Though it may afford momentary psychological relief, it is an illusion which physiologically, surely, must not be without danger.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

400. “That’s where your friend is, floating up to Heaven.”

— Viktor E. Frankl