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It isn't the past which holds us back, it's the future and how we undermine it, today.
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
Undermine
Holds
Future
Past
Today
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More quotes by Viktor E. Frankl
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.
Viktor E. Frankl
Usually, to be sure, man considers only the stubble field of transitoriness and overlooks the full granaries of the past, wherein he had salvaged once and for all his deeds, his joys and also his sufferings. Nothing can be undone, and nothing can be done away with. I should say having been is the surest kind of being.
Viktor E. Frankl
When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task. . . . He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.
Viktor E. Frankl
Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.
Viktor E. Frankl
The more one forgets one’s own self, the more human the person becomes.
Viktor E. Frankl
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
When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.
Viktor E. Frankl
Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose.
Viktor E. Frankl
A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the why for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any how.
Viktor E. Frankl
The last freedom is choosing your attitude.
Viktor E. Frankl
Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a secondary rationalization of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.
Viktor E. Frankl
When a man cannot find meaning, he numbs himself with pleasure.
Viktor E. Frankl
The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.
Viktor E. Frankl
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
Viktor E. Frankl
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
Viktor E. Frankl
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
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
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
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
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
