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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.

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
Kind
Suffering
Something
Lives
Spirit
Bearable
Find
Center
Live
Core
Human
Meaning
Humans
Becomes
Even
Worst

More quotes by Viktor E. Frankl

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But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look then was more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
Viktor E. Frankl
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How can we dare to predict the behavior of man? We may predict the movements of a machine, of an automaton more than this, we many even try to predict the mechanisms or dynamisms of the human psyche as well. But man is more than psyche.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.
Viktor E. Frankl
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I do the unpleasant tasks before I do the pleasant ones.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one's belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one's right to believe, and obey, his own conscience.
Viktor E. Frankl
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I never would have made it if I could not have laughed. It lifted me momentarily out of this horrible situation, just enough to make it livable.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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.
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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Our attitude towards what has happened to us in life is the important thing to recognize. Once hopeless, my life is now hope-full, but it did not happen overnight. The last of human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, is to choose one's own way.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Success is total self-acceptance.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Happiness cannot be pursued it must ensue.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Now, it is my contention that the deneuroticization of humanity requires a rehumanization of psychotherapy.
Viktor E. Frankl
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I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run- in the long run, I say! - success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.
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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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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The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.
Viktor E. Frankl
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We had to learn...that it did not really matter what we expected from life but rather what life expected from us.
Viktor E. Frankl