Top 500 Viktor E. Frankl Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “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

402. “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

403. “We all said to each other in camp that there could be no earthly happiness which could compensate for all we had suffered. We were not hoping for happiness – it was not that which gave us courage and gave meaning to our suffering, our sacrifices and our dying. And yet were not prepared for unhappiness.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

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

— Viktor E. Frankl

405. “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

406. “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

407. “In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

408. “It insists that life is meaningful and that we must learn to see life as meaningful despite our circumstances. It emphasizes that there is an ultimate purpose to life.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

409. “In the concentration camp every circumstance conspires to make the prisoner lose his hold. All the familiar goals in life are snatched away. What alone remains is “the last of human freedoms” – the ability to “choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

410. “No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

411. “Se necesitaba tiempo y paciencia para que estos hombres aceptasen la lisa y llana verdad de que nadie tiene derecho a hacer el mal, aunque se haya sufrido una atroz injusticia.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

412. “It is the nature of love that makes us see our loved one in their uniqueness and individuality.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

413. “It is very difficult for an outsider to grasp how very little value was placed on human life in camp. The camp inmate was hardened, but possibly became more conscious of this complete disregard of human existence when a convoy of sick men was arranged.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

414. “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

415. “Frankl writes that a person “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.” He concedes that only a few prisoners of the Nazis were able to do the former, “but even one such example is sufficient proof that man’s inner strength may raise him above his outward fate.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

416. “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

417. “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. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

418. “It goes without saying that meaning and purpose in life cannot be prescribed like a drug. It is not the job of a doctor to give meaning to the patient’s life. But it may well be his task, through an existential analysis, to enable the patient to find meaning in life.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

419. “Ironically enough, in the same way that fear brings to pass what one is afraid of, likewise a forced intention makes impossible what one forcibly wishes. This excessive intention, or “hyper-intention,” as I call it, can be observed particularly in cases of sexual neurosis.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

420. “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. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

421. “What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

422. “Let us consider, for instance, “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. Not a few cases of suicide can be traced back to this existential vacuum.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

423. “A realistic fear, like the fear of death, cannot be tranquilized away by its psychodynamic interpretation; on the other hand, a neurotic fear, such as agoraphobia, cannot be cured by philosophical understanding.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

424. “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

425. “Ada cukup banyak penderitaan yang harus kita jalani. Karenanya, kita perlu menghadapi seluruh penderitaan kita, dan berusaha meminimalkan perasaan lemah dan takut. Namun, kita juga tidak perlu malu untuk menangis, karena air mata merupakan saksi dari keberanian manusia yang paling besar, yakni keberanian untuk menderita.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

426. “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

427. “Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there is always only one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand. When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

428. “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

429. “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

430. “In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as “delusion of reprieve.” The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

431. “Apart from that strange kind of humor, another sensation seized us: curiosity. I have experienced this kind of curiosity before, as a fundamental reaction toward certain strange circumstances. When my life was once endangered by a climbing accident, I felt only one sensation at the critical moment: curiosity, curiosity as to whether I should come out of it alive or with a fractured skull or some other injuries.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

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

— Viktor E. Frankl

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

— Viktor E. Frankl

434. “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

435. “One may demand heroism only of a single person and that is oneself.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

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

— Viktor E. Frankl

437. “Kami benci kalau harus bercerita tentang pengalaman kami. Tidak ada penjelasan yang perlu diberikan untuk mereka yang pernah menjalaninya, dan mereka yang tidak langsung merasakannya tidak akan pernah memahami bagaimana perasaan kami saat itu dan perasaan kami sekarang.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

438. “The existential vacuum which is the mass neurosis of the present time can be described as a private and personal form of nihilism; for nihilism can be defined as the contention that being has no meaning.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

439. “Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

440. “We are reminded again of that remark of Goethe’s which we have already quoted, and which we called the finest maxim for any kind of psychotherapy: “If we take people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat them as if they were what they ought to be, we help them to become what they are capable of becoming.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

441. “There was neither time nor desire to consider moral or ethical issues. Every man was controlled by one thought only: to keep himself alive for the family waiting for him at home, and to save his friends. With no hesitation, therefore, he would arrange for another prisoner, another “number,” to take his place in the transport.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

442. “Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

443. “In fact, the drug scene is one aspect of a more general mass phenomenon, namely the feeling of meaninglessness resulting from a frustration of our existential needs which in turn has become a universal phenomenon in our industrial societies.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

444. “In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as “delusion of reprieve.” The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute. We, too, clung to shreds of hope and believed to the last moment that it would not be so bad.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

445. “My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn’t even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing – which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his 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.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

446. “In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

447. “And just as the animal is at times misled by the vital instincts, so may man go astray... whereas the ethical instinct alone enables him to discover the unique requirement of a unique situation.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

448. “Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

449. “Woe to him who, when the day of his dreams finally came, found it so different from all he had longed for!”

— Viktor E. Frankl

450. “If you want to stay alive, there is only one way: look fit for work. If you even limp, because, let us say, you have a small blister on your heel, and an SS man spots this, he will wave you aside and the next day you are sure to be gassed.”

— Viktor E. Frankl