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Decisions, not conditions, determine what a man is.

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
Determine
Decisions
Conditions
Decision
Men

More quotes by Viktor E. Frankl

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Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.
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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.
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The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected.
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A man who could not see the end of hisprovisional existence was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life.
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There are two races of men in this world but only these two: the race of the decent man and the race of the indecent man.
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It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.
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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For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.
Viktor E. Frankl
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It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.
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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
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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
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Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.
Viktor E. Frankl
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The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing
Viktor E. Frankl
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Ironically enough, in the same way that fear brings to pass what one is afraid of, likewise a forced intention makes impossible what one forcibly wishes... Pleasure is, and must remain, a side-effect or by-product, and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself.
Viktor E. Frankl
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It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.
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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What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms.
Viktor E. Frankl
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For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.
Viktor E. Frankl
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No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.
Viktor E. Frankl
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I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.
Viktor E. Frankl