Quotes from Viktor E. Frankl

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:

the period following his admission;

Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth.

let me make it perfectly clear that in no way is suffering necessary to find meaning. 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.

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control

no es el sufrimiento en sí mismo el que madura o enturbia al hombre, es el hombre el que da sentido al sufrimiento.

Lessing who once said, "There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose.

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal.

How is the existential vacuum to be explained? Unlike the animal, man is no longer told by his instincts as to what he must do. And in contrast to former times, he is no longer told by traditions and values what he should do. Now, knowing neither what he must do nor what he should do, he sometimes does not even know what it is that he basically wishes to do. Instead, he gets to wish to do what other people do (conformity) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).

Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them. We had to strive to lead them back to this truth, or the consequences would have been much worse than the loss of a few thousand stalks of oats.

In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end.

We all said to each other in camp that there could be no earthly happiness which could compensate for all we had suffered. We were not hoping for happiness—it was not that which gave us courage and gave meaning to our suffering, our sacrifices and our dying. And yet were not prepared for unhappiness.

As logotherapy teaches, there are three main avenues on which one arrives at meaning in life. The first is by creating a work or by doing a deed. The second is by experiencing something or encountering someone; in other words, meaning can be found not only in work but also in love.

Bismarck: «La vida es como visitar al dentista. Siempre crees que lo peor aún está por llegar, cuando en realidad ya ha pasado».

capacita al amado a actualizar sus posibilidades ocultas. El amor consigue que el otro realice su potencialidad personal.

turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life's transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.

I doubt that, in this case, I was dealing with a neurotic condition at all, and that is why I thought that he did not need any psychotherapy, nor even logotherapy, for the simple reason that he was not actually a patient. [...] A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.

Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.

progressive automation will probably lead to an enormous increase in the leisure hours available to the average worker.

It was the first selection, the first verdict made on our existence or non-existence. For the great majority of our transport, about 90 percent, it meant death. Their sentence was carried out within the next few hours.

despair threatened to overwhelm a young Israeli soldier who had lost both his legs in the Yom Kippur War. He was drowning in depression and contemplating suicide. One day a friend noticed that his outlook had changed to hopeful serenity. The soldier attributed his transformation to reading Man's Search for Meaning. When he was told about the soldier, Frankl wondered whether "there may be such a thing as autobibliotherapy—healing through reading." Frankl's

De ahí se deduce que el «tamaño» del sufrimiento humano es relativo.

Again our illusion of reprieve found confirmation. The SS men seemed almost charming. Soon we found out their reason. They were nice to us as long as they saw watches on our wrists and could persuade us in well-meaning tones to hand them over.

a mí me angustiaba otra cuestión: todo este sufrimiento, todas esas muertes, ¿tienen un sentido? —pues, de no ser así, tampoco tendría sentido sobrevivir a la estancia en el Lager—. Una vida que consistiera solo en salvarse o perecer, cuyo sentido dependiera del azar de las miles de arbitrariedades que conforman la vida en un campo de concentración, no merecería ser vivida.