Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
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Logotherapy sees the human patient in all his humanness. I step up to the core of the patient's being. And that is a being in search of meaning, a being that is transcending himself, a being capable of acting in love for others.
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The more one forgets himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is.
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Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.
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Fear may come true that which one is afraid of.
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Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.
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Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.
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When we are no longer able to change a situation - just think of an incurable disease such as an inoperable cancer - we are challenged to change ourselves.
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Faith is trust in ultimate meaning.
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No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.
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Religion is the search for ultimate meaning.
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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.
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When I was taken to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, a manuscript of mine ready for publication was confiscated. Certainly, my deep desire to write this manuscript anew helped me to survive the rigors of the camps I was in.
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A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life, I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.
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Even a genius cannot completely resist his Zeitgeist, the spirit of his time.
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Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
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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. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.
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Since Auschwitz, we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima, we know what is at stake.
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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.'
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When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.
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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.
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If you call 'religious' a man who believes in what I call a Supermeaning, a meaning so comprehensive that you can no longer grasp it, get hold of it in rational intellectual terminology, then one should feel free to call me religious, really.
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Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
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Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself - be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter.
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Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.