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As the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.

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
Ever
Live
Subsided
Mean
Emerged
People
Survival
Meaning
Question
Struggle
Means

More quotes by 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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Happiness cannot be pursued it must ensue.
Viktor E. Frankl
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What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.
Viktor E. Frankl
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The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.
Viktor E. Frankl
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It is true that we can see the therapist as a technician only if we have first viewed the patient as some sort of machine.
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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No one can take away my freedom to choose how I will react.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Decisions, not conditions, determine what a man is.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
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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There is also purpose in life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces.
Viktor E. Frankl
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I never would have made it if I could not have laughed. It lifted me momentarily out of this horrible situation, just enough to make it livable.
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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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
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Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality
Viktor E. Frankl
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And I quoted from Nietzsche: That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.
Viktor E. Frankl
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There are only two races, the decent and the indecent.
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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I would say that our patients never really despair because of any suffering in itself! Instead, their despair stems in each instance from a doubt as to whether suffering is meaningful. Man is ready and willing to shoulder any suffering as soon and as long as he can see a meaning in it.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Now, it is my contention that the deneuroticization of humanity requires a rehumanization of psychotherapy.
Viktor E. Frankl