Quotes from Viktor E. Frankl

if hundreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails.

Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost.

En ese estado de embriaguez nostálgica se cruzó por mi mente un pensamiento que me petrificó, pues por primera vez comprendí la sólida verdad dispersa en las canciones de tantos poetas o proclamada en la brillante sabiduría de los pensadores y de los filósofos: el amor es la meta última y más alta a la que puede aspirar el hombre.

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. Logos is deeper than logic.

Their question was, "Will we survive the camp? For, if not, all this suffering has no meaning." The question which beset me was, "Has all this suffering, this dying around us, a meaning? For, if not, then ultimately there is no meaning to survival; for a life whose meaning depends upon such a happenstance—as whether one escapes or not—ultimately would not be worth living at all.

When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude.

having a Why to live for enabled them to bear the How.

Don't aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's 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:

How can we dare to predict the behavior of man?

In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

Life requires of man spiritual elasticity, so that he may temper his efforts to the chances that are offered.

To draw an analogy: 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.

the words of Bismarck could be applied: "Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.

I only insist that meaning is possible even in spite of suffering—provided, certainly, that the suffering is unavoidable. If it were avoidable, however, the meaningful thing to do would be to remove its cause, be it psychological, biological or political. To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.

There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed.

From all this we may learn that 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.

Every therapy must in some way, no matter how restricted, also be logotherapy.

To the others of us, the mediocre and the half-hearted, the words of Bismarck could be applied: "Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.

el amor trasciende la persona física del ser amado y halla su sentido más profundo en el ser espiritual, el yo íntimo. Que esté o no presente esa persona, que siga viva o no, en cierto modo carece de importancia.

son las circunstancias excepcionalmente adversas o difíciles las que otorgan al hombre la oportunidad de crecer espiritualmente más allá de sí mismo.

Psychologically, what was happening to the liberated prisoners could be called "depersonalization." Everything appeared unreal, unlikely, as in a dream. We could not believe it was true.

Apathy, the main symptom of the second phase, was a necessary mechanism of self-defense. Reality dimmed, and all efforts and all emotions were centered on one task: preserving one's own life and that of the other fellow.

Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man - his courage and hope, or lack of them - and the state of immunity of his body will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect.

I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, "homeostasis," i.e., a tensionless state. 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.