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Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.

Viktor E. Frankl

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Viktor E. Frankl
Age: 92 †
Born: 1905
Born: March 26
Died: 1997
Died: September 2
Existential Therapist
Neurologist
Professor
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Surgeon
Writer
Vienna
Austria
Viktor E. Frankl
Viktor Emil Frankl
Purpose
Rather
Must
Ultimately
Men
Recognize
Life
Meaning
Asked
Challenges
Asks

More quotes by Viktor E. Frankl

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Logotherapy . . . considers man as a being whose main concern consists in fulfilling a meaning and in actualizing values, rather than in the mere gratification and satisfaction of drives and instincts.
Viktor E. Frankl
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[Speaking of his experience in a concentration camp:] As we said before, any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal...Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Man's search for meaning is the chief motivation of his life.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Happiness must ensue. It cannot be pursued
Viktor E. Frankl
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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 E. Frankl
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Somewhere I heard a victorious Yes in answer to my question of the existence of ultimate purpose.
Viktor E. Frankl
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I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run- in the long run, I say! - success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.
Viktor E. Frankl
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What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms.
Viktor E. Frankl
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The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.
Viktor E. Frankl
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The salvation of man is through love and in love.
Viktor E. Frankl
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We cannot, after all, judge a biography by its length, by the number of pages in it we must judge by the richness of the contents...Sometimes the 'unfinisheds' are among the most beautiful symphonies.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on.
Viktor E. Frankl
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I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Pain is only bearable if we know it will end, not if we deny it exists.
Viktor E. Frankl
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View life as a series of movie frames, the ending and meaning may not be apparent until the very end of the movie, and yet, each of the hundreds of individual frames has meaning within the context of the whole movie.
Viktor E. Frankl
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The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one's belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one's right to believe, and obey, his own conscience.
Viktor E. Frankl
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The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear anymore—except his God.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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.
Viktor E. Frankl