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Viktor Frankl approached Purpose from first principles, cutting through assumptions to reveal fundamental truths. This archive captures that thinking, giving you access to frameworks you can build on. Every quote is sourced and contextualized, allowing you to understand their reasoning. Use this when you need to think clearly about Purpose without inheriting broken mental models.
"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."
"Main article: Man's Search for Meaning"
Website: Wikiquote - Viktor Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984))
"Only through love can we truly understand the essence of another person and see the potential within them that has yet to unfold."
"If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. p. 67 in the 1959 Beacon Press edition"
Website: Wikiquote - Viktor Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984))
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response."
"Pain loses its crushing power the instant we find a purpose for it, such as the act of sacrifice."
"If a person possesses a strong enough reason to keep living, they can endure almost any circumstance they are forced to confront."
"There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life. p. 126 in the 1984 Pocket Books edition"
Website: Wikiquote - Viktor Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984))
"There is no single abstract meaning of life; the specific task life demands of us changes from moment to moment."
"It is true, Logotherapy, deals with the Logos; it deals with Meaning. Specifically I see Logotherapy in helping others to see meaning in life. But we cannot “give” meaning to the life of others. And if this is true of meaning per se, how much does it hold for Ultimate Meaning? Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning (1997)"
"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."
"Humor was another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else, can afford an aloofness to rise above any situation."
"Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice."
"What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him."
Website: Wikiquote - Viktor Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984))
"Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'."
"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible."
Website: Wikiquote - Viktor Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984))
"What is to give light must endure burning."
"Despair is the result of suffering that has not found a meaning; suffering without purpose is what destroys us."
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"Use this collection whenever you need Viktor Frankl's lens on Purpose."