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Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.

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
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Conditions
Decides
Moments
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Determines
Become
Simply
Stands
Doe
Existence
Ultimately
Self
Rather
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Giving
Whether
Fully
Determinism
Always
Moment
Determined
Determining
Men
Words
Exist
Conditioned

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At such a moment, it is not the physical pain which hurts the most (and this applies to adults as much as to punished children) it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all.
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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.
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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.
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No one can take from us the ability to choose our attitudes toward the circumstances in which we find ourselves. This is the last of human freedoms.
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Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them.
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Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.
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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. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose ones attitude in any given circumstance.
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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.
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Somewhere I heard a victorious Yes in answer to my question of the existence of ultimate purpose.
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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.
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The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected.
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But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.
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For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.
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To suffer unecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.
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A sound philosophy of life, I think, may be the most valuable asset for a psychiatrist to have when he is treating a patient.
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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.
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Man can only find meaning for his existence in something outside himself.
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A human being is a deciding being.
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Usually, to be sure, man considers only the stubble field of transitoriness and overlooks the full granaries of the past, wherein he had salvaged once and for all his deeds, his joys and also his sufferings. Nothing can be undone, and nothing can be done away with. I should say having been is the surest kind of being.
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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