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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.

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
Goal
Worthy
Needs
State
Meaning
Discharge
Men
Happiness
Cost
Striving
Life
Actually
Growth
Struggling
Rather
Struggle
Fulfilled
Change
Vision
Tension
Waiting
Potential
Character
Call
Strive
States

More quotes by 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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Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.
Viktor E. Frankl
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The one thing you can't take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.
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
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Pain from problems and disappointments, etc., is inevitable in life, but suffering is a choice determined by whether you choose to compare your experience and pain to something better and therefore feel unlucky and bitter or to something worse and therefore feel lucky and grateful!
Viktor E. Frankl
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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.
Viktor E. Frankl
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The more one forgets one’s own self, the more human the person becomes.
Viktor E. Frankl
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For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.
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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Happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy - it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself.
Viktor E. Frankl
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It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future...And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Happiness must ensue. It cannot be pursued
Viktor E. Frankl
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It isn't the past which holds us back, it's the future and how we undermine it, today.
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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I do the unpleasant tasks before I do the pleasant ones.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Life requires of man spiritual elasticity, so that he may temper his efforts to the chances that are offered.
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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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 E. Frankl
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This is the core of the human spirit ... If we can find something to live for - if we can find some meaning to put at the center of our lives - even the worst kind of suffering becomes bearable.
Viktor E. Frankl