Viktor Frankl quotes

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor, best known as the founder of logotherapy. His work explored the importance of finding meaning in life, even in the face of suffering. He became a leading figure in existential psychology and inspired millions through his writings, especially "Man's Search for Meaning." Here are 110 of his quotes:

Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. (Viktor Frankl)
An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior. View quote
Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves. View quote
Viktor Frankl
The meaning of my life is to help others find meaning in theirs. View quote
Viktor Frankl
There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life. View quote
Viktor Frankl
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake. View quote
Viktor Frankl
Fear may come true that which one is afraid of. View quote
Viktor Frankl
What is to give light must endure burning. View quote
Viktor Frankl
Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for. View quote
Viktor Frankl
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. View quote
Viktor Frankl
I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast. (Viktor 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. View quote
Viktor Frankl
Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human. View quote
Viktor Frankl
And I quoted from Nietzsche: That which does not kill me, makes me stronger. View quote
Viktor Frankl
Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary. View quote
Viktor Frankl
The more one forgets himself-by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love-the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. View quote
Viktor Frankl
It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. View quote
Viktor Frankl
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 meaninglessness in rational terms. View quote
Viktor Frankl
The crowning experience of all, ... is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear any more except his God. View quote
Viktor Frankl
Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. View quote
Viktor Frankl
A thought transfixed me for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truththat love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. (Viktor Frankl)
Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. View quote
Viktor Frankl
Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it. View quote
Viktor Frankl
In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. View quote
Viktor Frankl
A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease. View quote
Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl - Image
Photo: Prof. Dr. Franz Vesely, CC BY-SA 3.0 de
Occupation: Austrian Psychologist
Born: March 26, 1905
Died: September 2, 1997
Quotes count: 110
Wikipedia: Viktor Frankl

Related authors

Sigmund Freud - thumbnail
Sigmund Freud  233 
Austrian Neurologist
Carl Rogers - thumbnail
Carl Rogers  33 
American Psychologist
Abraham Maslow  58 
American Psychologist
Alfred Adler  56 
Austrian Psychologist
Rollo May - thumbnail
Rollo May  167 
American Psychologist
Erich Fromm - thumbnail
Erich Fromm  185 
German Sociologist
Soren Kierkegaard - thumbnail
Soren Kierkegaard  354 
Danish Theologian
Carl Jung  298 
Swiss Psychiatrist
Irvin D. Yalom - thumbnail
Irvin D. Yalom  12 
American Psychotherapist
Stephen Covey  200 
American Educator