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Happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy - it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself.

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
Working
Goal
Unintended
Happiness
Attained
Happy
Wanting
Cannot
Psychology
Come
Consequence
Must
Oneself
Greater

More quotes by Viktor E. Frankl

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The more one forgives himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.
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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...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
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Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.
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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Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.
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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What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.
Viktor E. Frankl
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The last of human freedoms - the ability to chose one's attitude especially an attitude of gratitude in a given set of circumstances especially in difficult circumstances.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Man's inner strength may raise him above his outward fate.
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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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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Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Pain from problems and disappointments, etc., is inevitable in life, but suffering is a choice determined by whether you choose to compare your experience and pain to something better and therefore feel unlucky and bitter or to something worse and therefore feel lucky and grateful!
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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Suffering presents us with a challenge: to find our goals and purpose in our lives that make even the worst situation worth living through.
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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[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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Somewhere I heard a victorious Yes in answer to my question of the existence of ultimate purpose.
Viktor E. Frankl