Quotes from Viktor E. Frankl

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.

Man is by no means fully free. Man is not free from determinants. Man's freedom is a finite freedom, not freedom from conditions; his freedom lies in the potentiality for taking a stand toward whatever conditions might confront him.

Some people say that a man dying in a sudden accident sees his whole life flash by, like a fantastically fast movie. To stay with this concept, one might say that in death, man has become the movie himself. He now 'is' his life as he lived it, he is his own life history as it happened to him, as good as he has created it. Thus, he is his own heaven and his own hell.

Men, in general, misunderstand the meaning of death. When the alarm clock goes off in the morning and frightens us from our dreams, we regard this awakening as a terrifying intrusion upon our dream world and do not realize that the alarm arouses us to our real existence, our day world. Do we mortals not act similarly, being frightened when death comes? Do we not also misunderstand that death awakens us to the true reality of ourselves?

Just as the boomerang returns to the hunter who has thrown it, only if it has missed its target, man returns to himself, reflects upon himself and becomes over-concerned with self-interpretation only when he has missed his mission, and has been frustrated in his search for meaning.

Sounding out to bless me and perhaps to say That you forgive me that I live.

H]uman freedom implies man's capacity to detach himself from himself.

Human responsibility rests on the 'activism of the future,' the choosing of possibilities from the future, and the 'optimism of the past,' the making these possibilities a reality and thereby rescuing them into the haven of the past.

But even one such example is sufficient proof that man's inner strength may raise him above his outward fate.

Heredity is no more than the material from which man builds himself. It is no more than the stones that are, or are not, refused and rejected by the builder. But the builder himself is not built of stones.

But ultimately man can actualize himself only by fulfilling a meaning out there in the world rather than within himself so that self-actualization becomes an effect of "self-transcendence." Being human means relating and being directed to something or someone other than oneself.

Even if you don't expect anything from life, doesn't life expect something from you?

at the lectern in a large, beautiful, warm and bright hall. I was about to give a lecture to an interested audience on, "Psychotherapeutic Experiences in a Concentration Camp" (the actual title I later used at that congress41

Under the same conditions, those who were oriented toward the future, toward a meaning that waited to be fulfilled—these persons were more likely to survive. Nardini and Lifton, two American military psychiatrists

knowledge, Tilly did volunteer and, for whatever reasons, was approved for transport.

I was trying to tell her that, if she found herself in a situation where she could save her life only at the price of yielding sexually, she should not feel inhibited out of any consideration for me. By giving her, so to speak, an absolution in advance, I was hoping to spare myself the guilt if such an inhibition might lead to her death.

Tilly must have been among them.

What is actually man's concern is not to fulfill himself or to actualize himself but to fulfill meaning and to realize value. And only to the extent to which he fulfills concrete and personal meaning of his own existence will he also fulfill himself. Self-fulfillment occurs by itself; not through intention but as effect.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human

There was plenty of suffering for us to get through. Therefore, it was necessary to face up to the full amount of suffering, trying to keep moments of weakness and furtive tears to a minimum. But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.

In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as "delusion of reprieve." The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be re- prieved at the very last minute.

In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.

M]an never, or at least not normally and primarily, sees in the partners whom he encounters and in the causes to which he commits himself merely a means to an end; for then he actually would have destroyed any authentic relationship to them. Then, they would have become mere tools, being of use for him, but, by the same token, would have ceased to have any value, that is to say, value in itself.

M]an is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he succumbs to conditions or defies them. In other words, man is ultimately self determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.