Viktor Frankl Quotes

"What is to give light must endure burning."

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response."

"The meaning of life is to give life meaning."

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances."

"Faith is the ultimate meaning that allows us to survive the most difficult circumstances."

"Education must be more than the mere transmission of knowledge."

"Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'."

"We can discover meaning in life in three ways: by doing a deed, by experiencing a value, and by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering."

"Despair is suffering without meaning."

"Human existence is essentially self-transcendence rather than self-actualization. We become most fully human when we overlook ourselves to serve a cause or love another."

"Every human person is unique and irreplaceable. This uniqueness gives dignity to every individual and meaning to their existence."

"We are not free from conditions, be they biological or sociological, but we are free to take a stand toward them."

"Conscience is the intuitive capacity of man to find out the meaning of a situation. It is a meaning organ."

"Instead of looking at the possibilities of the future, the pessimist sees only the stubble of the past. The optimist sees the granaries full of the harvest of their life."

"Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now."

"Between what happens to us and how we react, there lies a gap. Within that gap exists our ultimate freedom: the power to choose our own response."

"If a person possesses a strong enough reason to keep living, they can endure almost any circumstance they are forced to confront."

"You can strip a person of everything except their final liberty: the ability to decide their own attitude regardless of the situation."

"Once a situation becomes impossible to alter, the challenge shifts inward, requiring us to transform ourselves instead."

"We do not fabricate the meaning of our lives; rather, we must discover it waiting within the world."

"You cannot chase happiness directly; it only arrives as the unintended side-effect of dedicating yourself to a cause greater than yourself."

"The widespread neurosis of our time is not repression, but the existential vacuum—a sense of emptiness and meaninglessness."

"Pain loses its crushing power the instant we find a purpose for it, such as the act of sacrifice."

"Only through love can we truly understand the essence of another person and see the potential within them that has yet to unfold."

"Conduct your life as though you are living it over again, correcting the mistakes you were about to make the first time around."

"Being human always points to something or someone other than oneself—be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter."

"Even when everything else is stripped away, one freedom remains: the ability to choose your own attitude in any given set of circumstances."

"Despair is the result of suffering that has not found a meaning; suffering without purpose is what destroys us."

"It is not for us to question what life means, but rather to recognize that life is constantly questioning us, and we must answer through our actions."

"We must maintain an optimism in the face of tragedy, turning suffering into achievement, guilt into improvement, and transience into responsible action."

"Fear often manifests exactly what we dread, whereas wishing for the thing we fear can break the cycle of anxiety."

"There is no single abstract meaning of life; the specific task life demands of us changes from moment to moment."

"We find meaning in three ways: by creating a work, by experiencing something or someone, or by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering."