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Using Motivational Quotes to Improve Your Life
Continuing our ongoing series on motivational quotes from important figures in world history, I’m excited to share some powerful Viktor E Frankl quotes. Motivational quotes have a way of simplifying powerful ideas so they can be more easily remembered and deployed in everyday life.
What Viktor Frankl Can Teach Us About The Meaning of Life
Viktor E Frankl (1905-1997) was an accomplished neurologist and psychiatrist whose life’s work centered around the meaning of life and man’s effort to find meaning in suffering. He founded the branch of psychotherapy known as logotherapy (“healing through meaning”) and authored more than 39 books during his lifetime, including the acclaimed Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl was an impressive person by almost every measure, but what is perhaps even more remarkable is that he accomplished all of this despite having been imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
Prior to the war, Frankl was already a rising star in the European psychology scene. In the late 1920s, he arranged a youth counseling center in Vienna to help curb the rate of teen suicide. His program was so successful that Vienna didn’t see a single Viennese student suicide in the entire year of 1931. This accomplishment won him broad acclaim from prominent members of the European psychiatric community.
Unfortunately his ascent came to an abrupt halt by his imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz. He was one of an unforgivably small number of European jews who survived the genocide carried out by the Nazis during this time.
Frankl released Man’s Search for Meaning in 1949, just after the end of the war and his miraculous release. In it, he summarizes the atrocities he was forced to endure, and how he was remarkably able to find meaning in this experience, shaping his overall perspective finding meaning in life itself. Below are collected several of Frankl’s most powerful ideas, including passages from his works and excerpts from various interviews he has given over the years.
And if you haven’t yet had a chance to read Man’s Search for Meaning, I highly recommend picking up a digital or audiobook copy. It’s a short and valuable read:
Viktor Frankl Quotes to Inspire Your Life’s Journey
Viktor Frankl Quotes About the Meaning of Life
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. — Viktor Frankl
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. — Viktor Frankl
Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’. — Viktor Frankl
The meaning of life is to give life meaning. — Viktor Frankl
The point is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us. — Viktor Frankl
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. — Viktor Frankl
It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future. — Viktor Frankl
When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure. — Viktor Frankl
At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence. — Viktor Frankl
Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind. — Viktor Frankl
Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for. — Viktor Frankl
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. 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 Frankl
Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already. — Viktor Frankl
Being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. 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. — Viktor Frankl
Once an individual’s search for a meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering. — Viktor Frankl
Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now. — Viktor Frankl
Life is potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable. And this in turn presupposes the human capacity to creatively turn life’s negative aspects into something positive or constructive. In other words, what matters is to make the best of any given situation. — Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl Quotes About Responsibility
I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast. — Viktor Frankl
For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best. — Viktor Frankl
It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. — Viktor Frankl
As for the concept of collective guilt, I personally think that it is totally unjustified to hold one person responsible for the behavior of another person or a collective of persons. — Viktor Frankl
An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior. — Viktor Frankl
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake. — Viktor Frankl
Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. — Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl Quotes About Suffering
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. — Viktor Frankl
If there is a 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. — Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. — Viktor Frankl
In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. — Viktor Frankl
What is to give light must endure burning. — Viktor Frankl
To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic. — Viktor Frankl
At such a moment, it is not the physical pain which hurts the most (and this applies to adults as much as to punished children); it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all. — Viktor Frankl
A man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the ‘size’ of human suffering is absolutely relative. — Viktor Frankl
I believe that my handicap will only enhance my ability to help others. I know that without the suffering, the growth that I have achieved would have been impossible. — Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl Quotes About Fear
Fear makes come true that which one is afraid of. — Viktor Frankl
The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear anymore—except his God. — Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl Quotes About Love
I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. — Viktor Frankl
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 Frankl
Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. — Viktor Frankl
The truth-that love is the highest goal to which man can aspire. — Viktor Frankl
No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. — Viktor Frankl
Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. — Viktor Frankl
The salvation of man is through love and in love. — Viktor Frankl
The truth-that love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. 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 Frankl
Viktor Frankl Quotes About Hope
We cannot, after all, judge a biography by its length, by the number of pages in it; we must judge by the richness of the contents…Sometimes the ‘unfinisheds’ are among the most beautiful symphonies. — Viktor Frankl
For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement. — Viktor Frankl
Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. — Viktor Frankl
Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary. — Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl Quotes About Forgiveness
Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn. — Viktor Frankl
Each of us has his own inner concentration camp… We must deal with, with forgiveness and patience-as full human beings, as we are and what we will become. — Viktor Frankl
Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. — Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl Quotes About Happiness
Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. — Viktor Frankl
The incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading so that he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy. — Viktor Frankl
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts, comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. — Viktor Frankl
It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness. — Viktor Frankl
For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. 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 about it. — Viktor Frankl
Being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself, be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. 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. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence. — Viktor Frankl
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