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Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.

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
Everything
Except
Take
Choose
Thing
Beyond
Control
Situation
Freedom
Respond
Force
Possess
Away
Forces

More quotes by Viktor E. Frankl

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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 E. Frankl
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A man who could not see the end of hisprovisional existence was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.
Viktor E. Frankl
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If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.
Viktor E. Frankl
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The incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading so that he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.
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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When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task. . . . He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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 E. Frankl
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Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.
Viktor E. Frankl
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A human being is a deciding being.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.
Viktor E. Frankl
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I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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 E. Frankl
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Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.
Viktor E. Frankl
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If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load which is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. So if therapists wish to foster their patients' mental health, they should not be afraid to increase that load through a reorientation toward the meaning of one's life.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Fear may come true that which one is afraid of.
Viktor E. Frankl