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If we take a man as he is, we make him worse, but if we take man as he should be we make him capable of becoming what he can be.

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
Worse
Capable
Becoming
Take
Make

More quotes by Viktor E. Frankl

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Ultimately, we are not subject to the conditions that confront us rather, these conditions are subject to our decision ... we must decide whether we will face up or give in, whether or not we will let ourselves be determined by the conditions.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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
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Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Success is total self-acceptance.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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
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The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose ones attitude in any given circumstance.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Happiness cannot be pursued it must ensue.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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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Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
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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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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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.
Viktor E. Frankl
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Success, like happiness, is the unexpected side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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
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A sound philosophy of life, I think, may be the most valuable asset for a psychiatrist to have when he is treating a patient.
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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Either belief in God is unconditional or it is no belief at all.
Viktor E. Frankl