Viktor Frankl Quotes

104 Sourced Quotes

A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes-within the limits of endowment and environment-he has made out of himself.

Viktor Frankl
These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning in life in a general way.

Viktor Frankl
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 in right conduct.

Viktor Frankl
The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing

Viktor Frankl
What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.

Viktor Frankl
Self-actualization cannot be attained if it is made an end in itself, but only as a side effect of self-transcendence.

Viktor Frankl
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.

Viktor Frankl
Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her own life.

Viktor Frankl
It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.

Viktor Frankl
But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look then was more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

Viktor Frankl
I try to do everything as soon as possible, and not at the last moment. This ensures that, when I am overburdened with work, I will not face the added pressure of knowing that something is still to be done.

Viktor Frankl
I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.

Viktor Frankl
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. No one could yet grasp the fact that everything would be taken away. all we possessed, literally, was our naked existence.

Viktor Frankl
No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.

Viktor Frankl