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A human being is not one thing among others things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes-within the limits of endowment and environment-he has made out of himself.
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
Others
Determining
Human
Ultimately
Humans
Determine
Self
Limits
Thing
Among
Made
Becomes
Things
Environment
Men
Within
Endowment
More quotes by Viktor E. Frankl
The one thing you can't take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.
Viktor E. Frankl
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
I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost.
Viktor E. Frankl
Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.
Viktor E. Frankl
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
Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them.
Viktor E. Frankl
Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her own life.
Viktor E. Frankl
Austrian public-opinion pollsters recently reported that those held in highest esteem by most of the people interviewed are neither the great artists nor the great scientists, neither the great statesmen nor the great sport figures, but those who master a hard lot with their heads held high.
Viktor E. Frankl
When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.
Viktor E. Frankl
As such, I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.
Viktor E. Frankl
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
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
Sleep [is like] a dove which has landed near one's hand and stays there as long as one does not pay any attention to it.
Viktor E. Frankl
The incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading so that he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy.
Viktor E. Frankl
Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose.
Viktor E. Frankl
There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life.
Viktor E. Frankl
Most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.
Viktor E. Frankl
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
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
The transitoriness of our existence in now way makes it meaningless. But it does constitute our responsibleness for everything hinges upon our realizing the essentially transitory possibilities.
Viktor E. Frankl
