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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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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
Men
Willing
Meaningful
Doubt
Instance
Suffering
Patient
Stems
Whether
Despair
Patients
Long
Soon
Existential
Really
Meaning
Stem
Never
Instead
Shoulder
Would
Ready
Shoulders

More quotes by Viktor E. Frankl

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The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected.
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You don't create your mission in life - you detect it.
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No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.
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Pain is only bearable if we know it will end, not if we deny it exists.
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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.
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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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Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.
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We cannot, after all, judge a biography by its length, by the number of pages in it we must judge by the richness of the contents...Sometimes the 'unfinisheds' are among the most beautiful symphonies.
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What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
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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.
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If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
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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!
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Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
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The more one forgets one’s own self, the more human the person becomes.
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It is the pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.
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The last freedom is choosing your attitude.
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Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose.
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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.
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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