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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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Happiness cannot be pursued it must ensue.
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What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.
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Man can only find meaning for his existence in something outside himself.
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Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.
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Success, like happiness, is the unexpected side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.
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Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
Viktor E. Frankl
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As the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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.
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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View life as a series of movie frames, the ending and meaning may not be apparent until the very end of the movie, and yet, each of the hundreds of individual frames has meaning within the context of the whole movie.
Viktor E. Frankl
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I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.
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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There are some authors who contend that meanings and values are nothing but defense mechanisms, reaction formations and sublimations. But as for myself, I would not be willing to live merely for the sake of my defense mechanisms, nor would I be ready to die merely for the sake of my reaction formations.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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
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Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved.
Viktor E. Frankl
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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
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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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Just as a small fire is extinguished by the storm whereas a large fire is enhanced by it - likewise a weak faith is weakened by predicament and catastrophes whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them.
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 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