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We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: 1. by doing a deed 2. by experiencing a value and 3. by suffering.

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
Values
Deed
Three
Experiencing
Different
Deeds
Way
Discover
Life
Meaning
Value
Ways
Suffering

More quotes by Viktor E. Frankl

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You don't create your mission in life - you detect it.
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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If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Man can only find meaning for his existence in something outside himself.
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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When a man cannot find meaning, he numbs himself with pleasure.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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.
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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You can take away my wife, you can take away my children, you can strip me of my clothes and my freedom, but there is one thing no person can ever take away from me - and that is my freedom to choose how I will react to what happens to me!
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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The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing
Viktor E. Frankl
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Ultimately, we are not subject to the conditions that confront us rather, these conditions are subject to our decision ... we must decide whether we will face up or give in, whether or not we will let ourselves be determined by the conditions.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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.
Viktor E. Frankl
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No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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
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The more one forgets one’s own self, the more human the person becomes.
Viktor E. Frankl