Quotes from Viktor Frankl

It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.

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 human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances - to choose one's own way.

Man does not simply exist, but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.

Sports allow men to build up situations of emergency. What he then demands of himself is unnecessary achievement - and unnecessary sacrifice. He artificially creates the tension that he has been spared by affluent society.

The point is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.

Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now! It seems to me that there is nothing which would stimulate a man's sense of responsibleness more than this maxim, which invites him to imagine first that the present is past and, second, that the past may yet be changed and amended.

Human potential at its best is to transform a tragedy into a personal triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement.

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.

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.

We have absolutely no control over what happens to us in life but what we have paramount control over is how we respond to those events.

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.

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.

Wouldn't it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best. So, let us be alert-alert in a twofold sense: Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

We came to meadows full of flowers. We saw and realized that they were there, but we had no feelings about them. The first spark of joy came when we saw a rooster with a tail of multicolored feathers. But it remained only a spark; we did not yet belonged to this world.

Man does not simply exist, but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment..

If you treat people to a vision of themselves, if you apparently overrate them, you make them become what they are capable of becoming.

man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.

It is our responsibility to look for meaning in life, even in the darkest times, and whatever the circumstances we always have a vestige of free will.

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. Nevertheless, say yes to life; A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp

The last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

Between stimulus and response, there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.

Be the master of your will and the servant of your conscience

It isn't the past which holds us back, it's the future; and how we undermine it, today.

We don't invent our mission; we detect it.