Quote

It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.

Viktor E. Frankl

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Peculiarity
Looking
Future
Live
Men

More quotes by Viktor E. Frankl

Image
Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.
Viktor E. Frankl
Image
For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.
Viktor E. Frankl
Image
Despair is suffering without meaning.
Viktor E. Frankl
Image
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
Image
We dislike talking about our experiences. No explanations are needed for those who have been inside, and the others will understand neither how we felt then nor how we feel now.
Viktor E. Frankl
Image
View your life from your funeral, looking back at your life experiences, what have you accomplished? What would you have wanted to accomplish but didn't? What were the happy moments? What were the sad? What would you do again, and what you wouldn't
Viktor E. Frankl
Image
Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.
Viktor E. Frankl
Image
Only to the extent that someone is living out this self transcendence of human existence, is he truly human or does he become his true self. He becomes so, not by concerning himself with his self's actualization, but by forgetting himself and giving himself, overlooking himself and focusing outward.
Viktor E. Frankl
Image
It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.
Viktor E. Frankl
Image
Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
Viktor E. Frankl
Image
A sound philosophy of life, I think, may be the most valuable asset for a psychiatrist to have when he is treating a patient.
Viktor E. Frankl
Image
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
Image
Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.
Viktor E. Frankl
Image
An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.
Viktor E. Frankl
Image
The last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Viktor E. Frankl
Image
There are some authors who contend that meanings and values are nothing but defense mechanisms, reaction formations and sublimations. But as for myself, I would not be willing to live merely for the sake of my defense mechanisms, nor would I be ready to die merely for the sake of my reaction formations.
Viktor E. Frankl
Image
There are only two races, the decent and the indecent.
Viktor E. Frankl
Image
Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.
Viktor E. Frankl
Image
...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 E. Frankl
Image
Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a secondary rationalization of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.
Viktor E. Frankl