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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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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
Meaning
Pleasure
Rather
Pain
Gain
Men
Main
Life
Avoid
Gains
Concern

More quotes by Viktor E. Frankl

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One should not search for an abstract meaning of life ... Life can be made meaningful in a threefold way: first, through what we give to life ... second, by what we take from the world ... third, through the stand we take toward a fate we no longer can change.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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.
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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[Speaking of his experience in a concentration camp:] As we said before, any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal...Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost.
Viktor E. Frankl
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One can choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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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I do not forget any good deed done to me & I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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.
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
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Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Sports allow men to build up situations of emergency. What he then demands of himself is unnecessary achievement - and unnecessary sacrifice. He artificially creates the tension that he has been spared by affluent society.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one's belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one's right to believe, and obey, his own conscience.
Viktor E. Frankl
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These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning in life in a general way.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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
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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.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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.
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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Everywhere man is confronted with fate , with a chance of achieving something through his own suffering.
Viktor E. Frankl