Quotes from Viktor E. Frankl

This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives a meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work as much as it does on human love.

Even if things take such a good in one of a thousand cases, who can guarantee that in your case it will not happen one day, sooner or later? But in the first place, you have to survive in order to see that day dawn, and from now on the responsibility for survival does not leave you.

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.

Lo que el hombre necesita no es vivir sin tensión, sino esforzarse y luchar por una meta que merezca la pena.

Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness.

As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.

A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease. It may well be that interpreting the first in terms of the latter motivates a doctor to bury his patient's existential despair under a heap of tranquilizing drugs. It is his task, rather, to pilot the patient through his existential crises of growth and development. Logotherapy

El verdadero peligro de un ensayo de esta índole no radica en que se detecte un enfoque personal, sino en que se escriba con un tinte tendencioso.

never tire of saying that the only really transitory aspects of life are the potentialities; but as soon as they are actualized, they are rendered realities at that very moment; they are saved and delivered into the past, wherein they are rescued and preserved from transitoriness. For, in the past, nothing is irretrievably lost but everything irrevocably stored.

La Segunda Guerra Mundial enriqueció nuestros conocimientos con los estudios sobre «psicopatología de las masas» (si se me permite parafrasear el título del libro de LeBon), pues nos legó la guerra de nervios y la experiencia imborrable de los campos de concentración.

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.

did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.

I therefore felt responsible for writing down what I had gone through, for I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair.

life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones.

human life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying, privation and death.

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What

suffering is omnipresent. 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.

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 right conduct.

O mundo está numa situação ruim. Porém tudo vai piorar ainda mais se cada um de nós não fizer o melhor que pode.

No nos gusta hablar de nuestras experiencias. Los supervivientes no necesitamos ninguna explicación. Y los demás no comprenderían cómo nos sentíamos en el campo y cómo nos sentimos ahora».

Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.

If there is a meaning in life at all, than 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

The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs." "That was it, exactly," Frankl said. "Those are the very words I had written

people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.