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Ultimate freedom is a man's right to choose his attitude.

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
Ultimate
Choose
Attitude
Freedom
Right

More quotes by Viktor E. Frankl

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If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load which is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. So if therapists wish to foster their patients' mental health, they should not be afraid to increase that load through a reorientation toward the meaning of one's life.
Viktor E. Frankl
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I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.
Viktor E. Frankl
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As for the concept of collective guilt, I personally think that it is totally unjustified to hold one person responsible for the behavior of another person or a collective of persons.
Viktor E. Frankl
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God is the partner of your most intimate soliloquies
Viktor E. Frankl
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Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.
Viktor E. Frankl
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It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future...And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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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Success is total self-acceptance.
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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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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Thus, human existence-at least as long as it has not been neurotically distorted-is always directed to something, or someone, other than itself, be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter lovingly.
Viktor E. Frankl
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In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as delusion of reprieve. The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute. No one could yet grasp the fact that everything would be taken away. all we possessed, literally, was our naked existence.
Viktor E. Frankl
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The struggle for existence is a struggle 'for' something it is purposeful and only in so being is it meaningful and able to bring meaning into life.
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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At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Humor was another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation.
Viktor E. Frankl
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To suffer unecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.
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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[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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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.
Viktor E. Frankl